Rail electrification update

Network rail have issued an update today on the progress of their work in preparation for electrification of  rail network through Bath.

The update is reproduced below.

We had a busy week with several key guests visiting our sites to see the progress of the work which is progressing well to hand back the line on time at 05:15 am on Tuesday, 1 September.
Guests on site

We had the privilege of hosting the visit of Claire Perry, the Parliamentary Under Secretary of State at the Department for Transport (pictured below with Andy Haynes, Network Rail’s West of England project director) this Wednesday at our track lowering sites. Our project team showed her the work completed at Box Tunnel and the current works at Sydney Gardens. She was very impressed with the scale of the programme, the amount of planning and our progress over the last five weeks. 

On the same day we hosted the One Show who came along for a second day to film a piece on Box Tunnel, its history and the challenges of track lowering. Also in attendance was the great Isambard Kingdom Brunel’s great-great-grandson visiting the tunnel for the very first time. The piece will be aired early in September. Please keep an eye on our Twitter account, @networkrailgwrm, where we will let you know the date as soon as it is confirmed.

Work's progress

We're happy to report that the track lowering work at Box Tunnel is finished, with just some snagging work to complete by the weekend. We will be starting tamping on the up road at Middle Hill Tunnel tonight, to finish work on this site this weekend as well.

We have finished stressing and tamping yesterday at Bathampton Junction. We will carry out signal testing work over the next few days to confirm that all systems communicate properly in order to open the line as planned on Tuesday morning.

We started track lowering work at Sydney Gardens this Monday and work is progressing well. It is of course the jewel in the crown of Brunel’s railway and as part of a World Heritage Site, it deserves a lot of care and attention to be given to it as we undertake such a large piece of work. Those of you who have been able to go to the gardens and view the work will appreciate just how constrained a site this is, with lots of men and big pieces of kit required, all contained between the high retaining wall, the low balustrade wall and 4 listed bridges!

We are monitoring the high retaining wall to ensure that our works do not disturb it or to notify us should anything untoward happen. We are very pleased to report that as we type, no movement has been detected. 
The core works are due to finish early Saturday morning but of course the fencing will remain up for a couple of days more and you will continue to see activity, as we complete all the necessary testing we have to do prior to handing the line back to First Great Western.

The last few days of a project are always the most critical and Sydney Gardens is a fairly complex site, but we are confident that we will finish on time and re-open the line as planned on Tuesday, 1 September.