Severn Success - Canvas to Concrete

January 19th 2010

‘Network Rail has delivered on the day we said we would, for an extremely complex programme of work,' says Chris Rayner, route director for Network Rail, speaking as engineers and staff celebrated the successful completion of the first phase of the Newport - Severn Tunnel Junction project.

‘This first phase of work alone took nearly four years to bring from canvas to concrete. The result today is because of the hard work of our engineers and all our partners (who pulled together) to make it possible.' The improvement work, carried out over the Christmas and new year holiday, is part of the £150m Newport area re-signalling scheme.

More than 400 engineers worked round the clock every day, ploughing in nearly 100,000 hours altogether to complete the work on time.

‘Severn Tunnel Junction is among the busiest railway junctions in Wales and a key link to England. It is now even more robust (and will) serve passengers in the many decades to come. We have made good on decades of underinvestment, and this effort in south Wales will continue to meet growing rail demand,' says Chris.

The second phase of this scheme, which will include the re-signalling of Newport Station and re-modelling of the track layout at Maindee Junction, has already started and should be complete by the end of the year. 

The railway at Severn Tunnel Junction is now completely revamped with a new layout that removes the bottleneck in the area. For the first time in 25 years, passengers travelling to England will embark from the newly restored  platform 4 that was abandoned during the 1980s.

The new signalling centre in Cardiff is also in operation managing train operations between East Usk (Newport) and Pilning (Bristol). A total of 81 signals, 10 new signal gantries, 168 train detection counters and 39km of power cable have been renewed between Pilning and East Usk. 

The railway around Severn Tunnel Junction suffered years of decline after it was bombed in World War II. This scheme has reversed the history of Severn Tunnel Junction.

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