King’s Cross
Operators force Network Rail to postpone £237m King’s Cross upgrade plan, with December 2020 a preferred date.
THE £237 million upgrade of King’s Cross station throat will be delayed by up to a year, RAIL can exclusively reveal.
Network Rail has confirmed that major track remodelling and asset renewals scheduled to take place between December 2019-March 2020 will no longer go ahead as planned, with alternative dates now being considered.
Sources close to the project told RAIL the decision was taken after train operating companies serving the UK’s ninth busiest station failed to agree to the highly disruptive access that is required to complete the works.
Up to 50% of the station, which currently handles some 38 million passengers per year, will need to close for the three-month duration of the project, to enable the renewal of all life-expired track, sub-systems and overhead line equipment for a distance of up to 1.5 miles from the buffer stops.
Signalling control will also be transferred from King’s Cross signal box (which will close) to York Rail Operating Centre, and the station’s four-track approach increased to six lines by reopening the most easterly bore of Gasworks Tunnel (disused since 1973).
It is believed that poor performance this year on other parts of the network was a major factor in the decision to defer the works, as NR and train operators continue to recover from the damage inflicted by the May timetable meltdown on Northern and Thameslink networks.
Postponing the King’s Cross upgrade will also give NR, which owns and operates the station, valuable extra time to finesse a robust plan and communications strategy with the station’s four main passenger companies (London North Eastern Railway, Govia Thameslink Railway, Hull Trains and Grand Central), to minimise disruption to passengers during the partial blockade.
RAIL understands that December 2020 is NR’s preferred date to restart the project, as this is likely to coincide with a planned uplift in capacity on the Thameslink network through central London and onto the East Coast Main Line via Canal Tunnel.
This route will remain unaffected by the upgrade, giving passengers an alternative route into central London from Finsbury Park or Peterborough, which could be used as temporary termini for some long-distance services from Scotland and the north of England.
Up to eight trains per hour were expected to be running through Canal Tunnel from December 2019, as part of GTR’s aim to increase frequency through the Thameslink ‘central core’ to 24tph.
However, following wellpublicised difficulties in implementing the most recent timetable change in May, GTR has opted to incrementally increase frequency to 24tph over a longer time period.
Until 24tph is achieved, a number of existing Thameslink services will also continue to terminate at King’s Cross rather than using Canal Tunnel, placing further pressure on platform space.
With this planned additional capacity on the ECML and at King’s Cross itself no longer available in December 2019, postponing the upgrade would now appear to be a more attractive option to NR and operators alike, in order to better accommodate the expected passenger volumes during the works.
NR London North Eastern Route Managing Director Rob McIntosh exclusively told RAIL: “When we start the main blockade at King’s Cross we need to ensure we have a robust passenger handling strategy during what will be a period of significant planned disruption.
“We therefore need to make a decision on the timing of the project which works in the best interests of passengers. And so taking it back a year is, in this case, the right thing to do.
“This is the right decision for GTR passengers in particular, who have already had a difficult year, and we will continue to ensure that passenger experience is always forefront in our decision-making.”
A spokesman for LNER added:
“We’re working closely with NR on the plans and to understand how the decision will affect the East Coast Main Line.”
A number of shorter part-closures of King’s Cross are expected to go ahead as originally planned over selected weekends in 2019, in advance of the main blockade, so that enabling works can take place and signalling control gradually migrated to York ROC.
Closure dates have yet to be announced, and NR is still developing a passenger handling strategy which could include long-distance services terminating at Finsbury Park or some services terminating at Peterborough. Some trains could even be rerouted into London Liverpool Street.
Originally due for completion in January 2019, this is the second time that the King’s Cross project has been deferred after McIntosh intervened at a stage-gate review held in January 2016.
With the project at GRIP 3 (option selection) in NR’s eightstage Governance for Railways Investment Process, McIntosh asked his team (led by Route Delivery Director Rob Cairns) to reconsider the engineering options and how they might more cost-effectively comply with technical specification for interoperability (TSIs) for rail, such as clearance required between OLE and other structures.
RAIL reported in January ( RAIL 843) how the total cost of the project was slashed by more than £100m by using newly configured ‘virtual reality’ design software, and by targeting expensive design interventions to only where they were strictly necessary.
The King’s Cross upgrade is part of a suite of enhancements planned or already under construction for the ECML. They include a fourth track being installed between Huntingdon and Woodwalton and the construction of a grade-separated junction to the north of Peterborough at Werrington ( RAIL 865).
They have been designed to increase the number of longdistance high-speed train paths between London and Doncaster from six to eight by December 2021.