The Reading upgrade, involving extensive station and track works, is setting new standards in the rail industry. Principal programme sponsor, Tony Walker of Network Rail, updated Railtex visitors on the work and why it’s going so well.
W
e recently announced the good news that we are bringing the entire Read-
ing project forward by a year: we’ve been working with the train and freight operat- ing companies to see how we can accelerate work without causing them too much con- gestion.
We had a public consultation in 2008 as part of the Transport & Works Act, and as part of that we have an ongoing commitment to go out to the public of Reading to tell them not only what we’ve done, but what we’re doing in the following year and what we’ve got in the years after that.
Last year, we did the work on the new Thames Valley signalling centre, and we also did Caversham Road bridge. This year, we are lengthening platforms on the southern side, and we’re also renumbering the plat- forms. We’re just about to start to demol- ish the old signal box. We’re also doing the first element of the Cow Lane bridges – the south-side bridge gets widened as part of these Christmas works.
Beyond that, we’ve got other works includ- ing the commissioning of the station works, and then the commissioning of the viaduct, and then finally, commissioning the eastern chord. It’s a significant amount of work over the next few years.
Reading Borough Council are spending nearly £10m improving the road network around the station, including a redevelop- ment of the south-eastern interchange and a brand new south-western interchange, where they’re lowering the road at Station Hill back to its original level. That will pro- vide a walkthrough link with the subway, which is the non-fare paying route across the station. They are also building a new northern interchange.
Turning to the successes we’ve had: the new Caversham Road bridge went in first time during the works at the New Year, and wasn’t required to be moved, allowing us to finish six hours earlier than anticipated. My favourite part was that the guy who controls the 72-wheel vehicle which transported it into position – and each axle is separately
112 | rail technology magazine Jun/Jul 11
controlled – does it from a tiny remote con- trol box that’s set around his shoulder. It’s no different to the size of a remote control for a toy car, but he has absolute control over that.
The two old single-relief lines over Caver- sham Road have been donated to the Great Central Railway.
We’re now working on Vastern Road bridge, and we’re due to complete that work in July this year. It’s all on time and on budget.
We’re also doing embankment stabilisation work for the southern tunnel, and we are helping to re-align and rebuild the southern tunnel to accommodate the single line from the southern side of the station, all the way over to the north side of the station, for the Gatwick services.
We’ve been using something called 4D mod- elling – the ‘fourth dimension’ being time. Our whole project is using that. It means we can assess where we are at any particu- lar point and see if we’ve got any issues or problems with our delivery programme. We’ve used that for driver training, for rec- ognition, and it’s been a marvellous piece of technology.
It was first used on the WCML upgrade, and we brought it to this project as well. It’s pay- ing dividends: it gives our stakeholders and customers confidence that we are delivering what we say we are delivering to time.
We’ve moved the infrastructure mainte- nance team from Cow Lane to Napier Road, in a new, modern, purpose-built facility. It’s probably the best in the country at the moment. That’s given us the space to do the work to the depot. It’s a modular style building, but works very well, and the IMDU manager is extremely pleased with what we’re doing.
From 2012 onwards, we’ll commission and finish the southern platforms. The old plat- forms will be lengthened to 12-car length. In Easter 2013, we commission the new station, and that’s the far new platforms to the north, the new overbridge, the south-
ern tunnel, and all the links to connect the northern side of the station with the current infrastructure. Also in 2013, we’ll have com- pleted the new depot, to which the trains and operational kit will be transferred.
In 2014, we’ll complete the viaduct work, and in 2015, we’ll also do the Eastern Chord, so we’ll have fully operational grade separa- tion for Reading.
Our programme board for Reading includes the other stakeholders, including First Great Western as the station operator as the rep- resentative of all the TOCs and FOCs, and Reading Borough Council as the local au- thority, have been sitting on that board since the beginning influencing the decisions.
The success we had with our Christmas works was based on those relationships, not just with the train operators and Reading Borough Council, but also with our suppli- ers and maintainers. We want to improve and get better. At our feeder stations, we’ve put in mitigation measures, we’ve improved signalling, we’ve put in turnback facilities in a number of areas, we’ve built additional platforms in places like Theale to help keep passengers on the trains.
We’ve got very good relationships with peo- ple like BAM Nuttall, who’ve done our civils work, Buckinghams, who’ve done a lot of our enabling works, and Invensys, who’ve done our signalling. We’ve also worked very well with Royal Mail, having taken over their old depot at Reading. Our suppliers have leased that with us, and it means we’ve got all our materials in one area. We’re making active provision for electrification of the GWML.
The modelling that we’ve done shows that we’ll improve train performance by about three hours per day; not just because of Reading, but because of the way we’ve developed the timetable being Paddington and Oxford, Reading and Didcot, and Reading and Newbury and Basingstoke. It’s going to lead to a significant improvement in performance.
FOR MORE INFORMATION Visit
www.networkrail.co.uk/reading
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