From Network Rail
When track is ‘life-expired’ and maintenance is too expensive or ineffective, we come up with solutions to refurbish or renew it. These major projects are part of our Railway Upgrade Plan, and we carry them out at weekends or over bank holidays to minimise disruption.
Our track teams and the work they do
There will be a number of these projects taking place over the May bank holidays, on Saturday 5 May to Monday 7 May and between Saturday 26 May and Monday 28 May.
Early May
In Scotland, there will be plain line track renewals on the West Coast Mainline and in the Carstairs area, as well as track and overhead line work between Rutherglen and the Polmadie area.
Between Aberdeen, Dyce and the Kittybrewster area, we will be renewing the tracks alongside bridge demolition and renewals, signalling enabling work and telecom installation – all prepatory work for a 14-week block as part of the Aberdeen to Inverness improvement project.
A range of track work is planned for the South East, including track upgrades between Redhill, Gatwick and Three Bridges on the Brighton Mainline and through Sevenoaks Tunnel in Kent, to provide smoother, more reliable journeys. Plain line track renewal will be taking place between New Cross Gate and Brockley, and at St Johns, while there will be switches and crossings refurbishment at Tinsley Green. The High Output team will be working between Dean Farm and Horley, as well as at Purley.
On the Western route, two sets of track renewals will improve reliability and upgrade the railway: switches and crossings will be renewed at West Drayton and Slough West, and there will also be High Output track renewals at Longley.
Switches and crossings will also be renewed at North Wembley and south of Carlisle station, both on the LNW route.
As technology progresses, Network Rail will be upgrading the signalling system on various parts of Britain’s railways to reduce disruptions such as signal failures and to improve services.
From Network Rail
We’re replacing trackside signalling equipment with modern, in-cab computer displays and control centre systems, which means the future of railway signalling belongs inside the train, bringing all information from one of 12 regional operating centres around Britain to the driver, instantly.
Across Britain, we’re carrying out the complex electrical work needed to ‘recontrol’ the signals, which involves moving control of the signals from the side of the track to new, state-of-the-art operating centres.
We will be carrying out signalling work on the Halton Curve near Liverpool during both the early May bank holiday (Saturday 5 May to Monday 7 May) and the late May bank holiday weekend (from Saturday 26 May to Monday 28 May). The Halton Curve is the 1.5 miles of track that links the Chester/Warrington line and the Liverpool/Crewe line at Frodsham Junction. This will enable a new hourly service.
There will also be resignalling in the Birmingham area during the late May bank holiday, as part of the wider West Midlands resignalling project.
In Scotland, signalling installation will take place in the Rutherglen and Polmadie area over both the early and late May bank holidays, while in early May, work will take place between Motherwell and the Mossend area as part of the Motherwell North signalling renewal project.
In the South East, signalling control of the railway in the Lewisham and Hither Green areas will be moved to the modern Rail Operating Centre (ROC) at Three Bridges in early May.
Here’s the London Bus news update from LOTS:
1) 28th April saw the assumption of routes 31/N31 by Metroline from Tower Transit. The latter operator is now able to withdraw its last 04-reg VNWs. At Metroline and instead of new buses, twenty older VWs were transferred to West Perivale Garage for the service. These were gathered up partly by the introduction of the last few new VWHs at Willesden, the transfer of more older VWHs from Willesden to Holloway and the cumulative effect of assorted PVR reductions around the fleet. Nevertheless the last five VPs at Willesden are still in use, mostly on the 260 and 460.
2) Delivery has begun of examples from some new batches of buses for London: Go-Ahead EHs for New Cross routes 36 and 171, StreetDecks (WSD class) for route 44 at Merton as well as the first few BYD/ADL electric BEL class for Metroline route 46. At Abellio all of the new E40Hs (2603-18) have been delivered ready for the take-up of route 196 next Saturday 5th May. They will release the earliest E400s at Go-Ahead (E 1-15), most of which are destined for GAL’s Commercial fleet. Indeed E 8 has already received commercial livery with charcoal grey skirt and gold fleetnames.
3) An unexpected new operation began on 20th April at London City Airport with Arriva Kent & Surrey using four all-white Solo SRs formerly used in Malta. It is a landside staff car park shuttle and the intention is to replace them with new Enviro200 (MMC)s in due course.
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