Delivering more than £133 million of engineering work over Christmas

Delivering more than £133 million of engineering work over Christmas

Rail Director’s Nigel Wordsworth looks at the huge amount of work carried out by Network Rail and its supply chain during the festive period

Neasden Bridge Image: Network Rail

Every year, the Christmas and New Year holiday gives Network Rail and its contractors the opportunity to carry out work that would just take too long to do in a normal working week.

No trains run on Christmas Day, and only a few airport shuttle services run on Boxing Day. So, in most parts of the country, that gives engineers two clear days for uninterrupted work.

Some services stop early on Christmas Eve, others start late on 27 December. or are even postponed altogether over the holiday week.

Reduced timetables operate over New Year’s Eve and New Year’s Day. With 2 January falling on a Sunday this year, and the Monday being a bank holiday, normal train services didn’t resume until Tuesday 4 January.

A number of significant projects were delivered across the length and breadth of the country

As a result, across the Christmas and New Year period, Network Rail and the rail supply chain delivered more than £133 million of engineering work from the evening of Christmas Eve through to the early hours of 4 January 2022.

Teams worked at over 4,500 sites across more than 1,900 possessions, delivering major enhancements as well as core renewals and maintenance works around the rail network.

DWWP standard Over Christmas 2007, possession overruns at Shields junction, Liverpool Street and Rugby had a major financial and reputational impact on Network Rail. To try to ensure this state of affairs was never repeated, the Delivering Work Within Possessions (DWWP) standard was developed from industry best practices. Since its launch in 2009, it has continually been developed and improved, based on feedback from across the business.

Leeds Overhead wires being installed Image: Network Rail

Under the DWWP standard, all worksites are assessed to identify if there is a risk of a possession overrun – a high risk (RED) score is the trigger to schedule and implement a series of mandated and best practice risk mitigation processes.

Of the work carried out over Christmas and New Year 2021/22, 42 projects covering 77 worksites were identified as RED through the DWWP standard, therefore deemed to carry a greater risk of possession overrun and/or a more significant impact in the event of an overrun. Despite resourcing challenges imposed by the ongoing pandemic, a number of significant projects were delivered across the length and breadth of the country, with a mixture of asset renewal schemes and enhancement schemes to enable future network upgrades. The highlights included:

The commissioning of major upgrades to the track layout, signalling and OLE in the vicinity of Leeds station as part of Transpennine Route Upgrade;

The successful commissioning of axle counters between Paddington and Stockley on the Great Western main line during Christmas Day and Boxing Day;

Renewal of Spital Ladder, located on the East Coast main line at Peterborough;

Renewal of Uddingston junction near Glasgow using new technology in the form of Unistar HR point machines; Bridge renewals/replacements completed in nine locations across England and Wales; S&C renewals at Pouparts junction and at Courthill in south London.

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The £126 million Leeds Station Capacity Programme is designed to improve and increase operational capacity within the station. The Christmas 2021 works delivered Phase 3b, which completes the functionality and flexibility improvement works linked with the construction of the new Platform 0 and also enables parallel moves between the A-C lines and Platforms 0-6 at the west end of Leeds station.

Minimise disruption Between Christmas Day 2021 and 4 January 2022, during a series of full and partial closures aimed at keeping passenger disruption to a minimum, the track layout was amended and associated changes were made to the overhead line equipment and the signalling. Platform 7, at the east end of the station, was extended to enable four-car working, further increasing the station’s capacity.

In addition, a new six-track UTX (under-track crossing) to the west of the station was installed to increase cable route capacity.

Finally, the Leeds capacity team integrated its plans and acted as principal contractor for works undertaken by Network Rail’s works delivery unit to re-ballast and re-sleeper the Whitehall flat crossing, which had been prioritised to improve asset reliability in and around Leeds station.

Between Paddington and Airport junction, where the Great Western main line turns off into Heathrow over the Stickley viaduct, some 700 obsolete Reed track circuits have been replaced by modern Frauscher axle counters, improving reliability.

In addition, five new workstations were commissioned in the Thames Valley Signalling Centre at Didcot, along with the provision of four new scalable systems for infrastructure changes and the reconfiguration of interlocking and control systems.

Near Peterborough, engineers undertook a like-for-like renewal of the scissors crossover between the Down Slow lines, the March Independent line and the Down Fast. This was being renewed to improve reliability through a layout that is heavily used by both train operators and freight companies.

Renewal of the scissors crossover and the associate turnout on the Down Fast was completed and fully commissioned as planned with the possession handed back on time.

However, the team was caught out by the time taken for the Kirow rail crane to collect some of the panels from the laydown areas and also the time required to manoeuvre the large diamond panel around various lineside structures, although this time was largely recovered through the rest of the programme.

Leeds Network Rail complete biggest track upgrade at Leeds station in 20 years Image: Network Rail

The £126 million Leeds Station Capacity Programme is designed to improve and increase operational capacity within the station

Uddingstone junction lies on the West Coast main line between Motherwell and Glasgow. Over Christmas and New Year, four point-ends were replaced, along with a total of 1,039 yards (950 metres) of plain line.

Progress Rail supplied the first-of-type NR60 Mk2 double junction, which included a switch diamond, while the Voestalpine Unistar HR point machines were also new to the UK, although they have been in use elsewhere for some time. The Rail Systems Alliance Scotland (Network Rail, Babcock and Arcadis) completed the work on time, handing the site back at 50mph as planned, with the help of Story Contracting, Trimble and Speedy.

The railway bridge over the canal at the Ocean in Stonehouse, Stroud, Gloucestershire, was one of several replaced around the country. Ocean bridge was replaced on behalf of the Cotswold Canals Connected Project, and engineers also converted the current culvert to a new open structure, which will allow boats to pass through for the first time since 1968.

On Southern region, two turnouts were renewed at Pouparts junction near Clapham, along with around 200 metres of plain line, as part of the Victoria Resignalling and Recontrol project. These were life-expired assets, with their replacements having improved geometry and modern materials for improved resilience.

All of the planned works were completed within the 10-day blockade at Victoria.

Overruns In total, 1,985 possessions were booked across the network. Seventeen of them overran, representing a successful possession hand back rate of 99.1 per cent, which is a slight improvement on performance during Christmas and New Year 2020.

The total of possession overrun delay incurred was 889 minutes, considerably fewer than for the equivalent period during recent years.

Five of the possessions which overran were linked to delivery of a major ‘red-ranked’ scheme. These were:

Eastern – Leeds Station Capacity – a 10-minute possession overrun occurred, generating 21 delay minutes, due to delays picking up worksite marker boards as a result of possession staff shortages;

Eastern – Sundon Feeder – complications with the installation of an electrical bond saw an overrun of 37 minutes, incurring 16 delay minutes to an empty coaching stock service;

Wales & Western – Filton East Curve – the late removal of detonator protection by possession staff during an interim handback on 27 December resulted in an overrun of 11 minutes, incurring 82 delay minutes;

Eastern – Crossrail Anglia & OLE Renewals – an overrun of 146 minutes occurred, generating 424 delay minutes, caused by failure of the recovery unit on the wiring train during the early stages of the work resulting in the programme shifting;

Southern – Victoria Phase 3 Resignalling – on moving from part 10 to part 11 of the possession, protection boards had been left in place causing 166 overrun-related delay minutes.

Neasden Bridge

All of the planned works were completed within the 10-day blockade at Victoria

Track upgrade at Leeds station Image: Network Rail