Rail passengers are being advised of changes to journeys over nine days from this weekend while engineers invest millions of pounds improving future journeys on the West Coast main line through Staffordshire.
Network Rail is carrying out a programme of upgrades on the Trent Valley line between Saturday 15 and Sunday 23 July.
This involves an £8.5m investment into the railway at Colwich Junction which will see engineers:
Install 2km of new track
Replace 3,300 railway sleepers
Lay 2,500 tonnes of new track foundation stone, called ballast
At the same time work will continue on a major scheme to renew the railway signalling system in the Trent Valley area*.
During the closure, engineers will also use the time when no passenger trains are running to safely remove Cross City line platform 3 at Lichfield Trent Valley station.
Long-distance trains will use alternative routes, and rail replacement buses will keep passengers on the move between stations on the Trent Valley line itself.**
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At the same time, HS2 is planning to move a huge new bridge structure into place while no trains are running on this busy section of the West Coast main line.
Scores of workers have been building the 6,500-tonne concrete bridge beside the railway over the last six months.
It will be slowly driven into place on the back of a huge transporter vehicle to become a 56m long and 19m wide bridge to carry the existing railway southeast of Lichfield Trent Valley station.
In the space created underneath, HS2 lines will then be built in the coming years and allow Britain’s new high-speed railway to pass beneath the West Coast main line in future.
When complete, HS2 which will transform journeys between London, the Midlands and the North, providing zero-carbon journeys from day one and also making space on the existing railway network for more freight and local services.
Meanwhile, Saturday 15 July also marks the start of a six-month closure of the interchange with the Cross City line at Lichfield Trent Valley station for platform three to be demolished then entirely rebuilt.
www.avantiwestcoast.co.uk
