OREANDA-NEWS. The work at Reading involves installing new freight lines under the viaduct to completely separate passenger and freight services, enabling all those travelling on this route to experience smoother, faster journeys into and through Reading. This work is the penultimate phase of the Reading redevelopment project which is currently a year ahead of schedule.

In addition, a major re-signalling project will be undertaken at Slough that involves replacing ageing signalling equipment with new ‘state of the art’ technology that will improve reliability for passengers travelling on the route to London Paddington from the west, south west and Thames Valley.

Patrick Hallgate, Network Rail’s managing director for the Western route, said: “This is our most ambitious package of improvement work to date and with 1,200 engineers working 97,000 hours over Easter, we definitely have a story to tell.”

To complete these major projects in as short a timescale as possible, there will be timetable changes and in some cases replacement bus services running on parts of the Thames Valley network over the Easter period. Passengers are therefore advised to check rail websites for travel information if their journeys involve passing through this area.

Patrick concluded: “We are acutely aware that some of our work could inconvenience those who want to travel over the Easter period, which is why we want to be open and provide the public with live information about how we are using this time to make improvements to this part of the network.

“Once completed, this package of work will deliver immediate benefits for the many thousands of passengers who travel through the Thames Valley and into London. These include reduced journey times, greater reliability and ultimately a better travelling experience.”

Anyone who wishes to follow the progress of the improvement work can do so by following the Twitter account @networkrailgwrm and the hashtag #greaterwest. Tweets about the work will start on the morning of Friday 3 April.

About Network Rail

Network Rail owns, manages and develops Britain’s railway – the 20,000 miles of track, 40,000 bridges and viaducts, and the thousands of signals, level crossings and stations (the largest of which we also run). In partnership with train operators we help people take more than 1.6bn journeys by rail every year - double the number of 1996 - and move hundreds of millions of tonnes of freight, saving almost 8m lorry journeys. We’re investing £38bn in the railway by 2019 to deliver more frequent, more reliable, safer services and brighter and better stations.