Train passengers back on track after Network Rail completes essential works
Greater Anglia train passengers will benefit from extensive engineering works carried out across the rail network over the festive period.
Major station construction programmes, track and overhead line renewals, bridge demolitions and planned maintenance were completed, despite poor weather.
Katie Frost, Network Rail’s route director for Anglia, said: “Months of rigorous preparation for the engineering work over Christmas has been successfully delivered as planned and the railway reopened on schedule to passenger and freight services. Thank you to all our customers and passengers for your patience and understanding while we delivered a lot of work to maintain and improve the railway across Anglia.”
Critical projects were completed at Cambridge South and Beaulieu Park stations, connecting and completing new sections of mainline track to enable the station constructions to continue safely into 2024.
The Cambridge resignalling team installed signal gantries and associated equipment between Cambridge and Ely as part of a larger programme of investment.
At Beaulieu Park, north of Chelmsford, new track was brought into use to allow trains to divert around the area of construction for new platforms while building work on the new station continues.
At Stratford, Network Rail replaced 1km (0.62 miles) of new overhead wire and renewed a set of track points (moveable sections of track which allow trains to switch between lines). Track points were also replaced and adjustments made to the overhead line equipment at Barking.
The Kingsbury Road bridge was demolished. A new structure is planned to be installed on the weekend of January 27-28 to reopen by summer.
Network Rail renewed around 300m of rail and 392 baseplates in the tunnel at Ipswich as well as clearing out the gulleys and gutters to maintain drainage.
And it completed general maintenance work across the network to take advantage of existing closures of the railway by undertaking surveys, inspections and repairs.
Further weekend engineering work will be continuing through January. Passengers are encouraged to continue to check journey plans via nationalrail.co.uk[1] or greateranglia.co.uk[2] and allow extra time if necessary.
On the weekends of January 20-21 and 27-28, the line will be closed between Cheshunt, Hertford East and Audley End all weekend. Connecting rail replacement bus services will operate between Waltham Cross and Hertford East, Stansted Airport and Audley End.
References
- ^ nationalrail.co.uk (www.nationalrail.co.uk)
- ^ greateranglia.co.uk (www.greateranglia.co.uk)