TRACK TECHNOLOGY
Alliance has started work on a £7m programme of track maintenance in the Wimbledon area, designed to improve the reliability and punctuality of trains on this part of the network.
per hour pass through Wimbledon at peak times and, as a result, the state of the railway around the station has a critical impact on punctuality across the network. But some of the infrastructure in the area dates back to the 1970s.
Preparatory work for the £7m project – which was 14 months in the making – started in closure allowing the team to clear the site ready for work in the new year.
project manager, told us that during the Christmas closure there was a great deal of signalling preparation with new location cases, new plug interface location boxes and new cables being run. In addition to this, point motors were laid out ready for the work to begin and the team set the site compound up.
Successful crossover installation
Once this work was complete, the engineering team was ready to take possession of the area west of Wimbledon station where they would begin replacing 12 sets of points.
50 | rail technology magazine Dec/Jan 15
T Work has started on a £7m project to rebuild a crucial railway junction in Wimbledon. Shaun Hodges, Network Rail’s
Wessex S&C project manager, discusses the successful early progress and revisions.
“The core renewals started on the weekend of 3-4 January, and that is when we broke the track “We put a long crossover in place at the west end of the station – point number 756 A/B.
“It all went according to plan, 100% exactly how we wanted it to go and we handed back about half-an-hour early.”
The project, being carried out by Network Rail and contractor Colas Rail, is taking place over six weekends from 3-4 January through to mid- February. But during the weekend possessions, through, Wimbledon.
Thameslink services, however, will continue to run to Wimbledon from central London there will be no services from Wimbledon to
Asked how the team managed to ensure the “We had operational contingencies agreed with the train operators, so we had a detailed plan in the event of an over-run. We also had a mitigation plan in place and a huge bus plan, bigger than any I’ve developed before with my construction contingencies throughout the entire weekend to hand it back on time.”
24 point ends with conventional back drives, added that ‘micro-managing’ was also essential.
“Most of the lessons I learnt from that project, I transferred into Wimbledon,” he said, “which included lots of micro-planning and not leaving anything to chance.
“We looked at everything that could’ve gone wrong. For instance, we had a mitigation plan right down to getting 24-hour chefs in hotels for people who were going back at various times of the day and night.”
Revised programme
Originally the Wimbledon renewals team was tasked with replacing 12 sets of points over the allocated six weekends, but that has now been revised due to ‘restrictions’ being put in place.
it is now going to be eight with a revised plan. We have had some restrictions put on us, for a number of reasons. Initially, we will be doing eight of the 12 points and the other four, hopefully, will be done later in 2015. But this is not dated at the moment.”
Asked what the restrictions were and why they
spotlight after engineering over-runs at King’s
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