Passengers are being thanked for their patience after a 21-day closure of the West Coast Main Line through Staffordshire, Cheshire and Greater Manchester for multiple upgrades to improve future journeys for passengers and freight.
On the morning of Saturday 23 August the 50-mile stretch of railway, where improvements to bridges, tracks, overhead lines and lineside structures have been taking place, fully reopened to trains.
Those projects all took place while the railway through Stockport was completely closed for a major £20 million project to remove and rebuild a 67-year-old railway bridge over five lines to the south of the town’s station.
Network Rail has released footage of the first trains running through Stockport from just after 5am this morning to mark the railway reopening, alongside time-lapse footage of the dismantling and reconstruction of Greek Street railway bridge over the last 21-days.
The rare three-week railway closure over a wide geography gave the company and its supply chain the perfect opportunity to carry out numerous railway improvement schemes while the routes in and out of Stockport were closed to train traffic, including:
- Track and points renewal in Macclesfield.
- Platform reconstruction at Poynton station in Cheshire.
- Footbridge renovations at Longport station in Stoke-on-Trent.
- River Trent Viaduct waterproofing in Stone.
- Track upgrades at Hixon, Stone and Congleton.
- Track and points renewal at Stone station.
- Level crossing upgrades at Meaford, Church Lane, and Aston-by-Stone crossings in Stone.
- Track and drainage improvements near Trentham.
Combined with the work at Greek Street, the full portfolio of work carried out by Network Rail and its partners to improve the West Coast Main Line was in excess of £43 million.
John Nixon, Network Rail Capital Delivery senior programme manager, said: “We’d like to thank passengers impacted by this significant railway closure of the West Coast Main Line for the last three weeks. It’s allowed us to invest tens of millions of pounds and make wide ranging improvements to provide a safer and more reliable railway, benefiting journeys for passengers and freight in the future.
Image credit: Network Rail