NR on track with Derby station upgrade preparations

Preparations for the 79-day resignalling and track remodelling of Derby station this summer are “going very well”, reports Network Rail Senior Sponsor Kevin Newman.

Major engineering works are set to commence on July 22, with some £200 million to be spent on replacing life-expired assets and improving the flow of traffic through the area.

Some 10½ miles of new track and 140 miles of lineside cabling is due to be laid, while 55 new signals, 79 sets of points and nine signal gantries will all be installed.

Spondon Level Crossing will be upgraded, and Derby Power Signal Box will close with control transferred to a new workstation within East Midlands Control Centre.

Meanwhile, London Road Junction will be remodelled and a new 320-metre platform opened to fully segregate services running on a north-south axis between Birmingham-Sheffield from the arrivals from Nottingham and London to the southwest.

The work will be carried out in two stages, focusing on the south side of Derby until September 4, and then the north side until October 7.

East Midlands Trains and CrossCountry will both operate temporary timetables, with diversions and rail replacement bus services in place on all routes at various times throughout the upgrade.

Newman explained that the 79-day length of the part-closure was unavoidable owing to the scale and complexity of the work, with as much work as possible being done before the closure begins.

He told RAIL: “It would have been impossible to do this in a more phased approach, due to the radical change in layout and full signalling recontrol that’s involved. It’s better to get the pain out of the way quickly, so I ask passengers to please bear with us.

“Whatever we can do before the closure is being done. That includes power supply work, and the new platform is progressing and will be ready to start on July 22.

“We are currently ahead of schedule on trackwork and have already installed three new gantries and a number of new signals. This means that we won’t be going into the closure behind.”

Access to both Rolls-Royce and Bombardier’s manufacturing facilities in the city will also be disrupted by the work, although Newman says that the journey time benefits on offer to both freight and passenger operators will be more than worth the short-term inconvenience.

This includes line speed improvements throughout the station from 15mph to 40mph, and freight trains being routed straight through Platforms 1-2 in the future rather than via outlying goods loops, which will now be removed.

“Nothing much has happened to the layout since the 1960s when Derby PSB was built, but passenger traffic has more than doubled since. The new layout is based on current and predicted demand,” said Newman.

“The increased line speed will give enormous journey time benefits as part of NR’s wider Midland Main Line improvement programme, while the segregation of services will also mean we can cut pathing times and remove a key bottleneck.”

The upgrade is being carried out by Siemens (signalling), S&C Alliance (trackwork) and Galliford Try (civil engineering).