OREANDA-NEWS. April 08, 2015. Track has been relaid and moved, signals replaced and new equipment installed along several miles of railway stretching from Waterloo East to Bermondsey. Southeastern were unable to run trains through London Bridge over all four days, meaning passengers had to plan alternative routes to Cannon Street, Charing Cross and Waterloo East.

Thameslink Programme Director Simon Blanchflower said: “The work we completed over the Easter holiday was a crucial part of the plan to improve services through central London.

“There is no good time to do this disruptive work but by doing it over the holiday we were able to reduce the impact on the millions of passengers who use London Bridge, Charing Cross, Waterloo East and Cannon Street every week.

“By moving the track around, we’ve made the space for some more major work out at Bermondsey that will take place later this year. This will provide a new dive-under to separate Thameslink services from those travelling to Charing Cross and improve punctuality and reliability.”

In addition, work to replace 1950s signalling equipment meant there were no trains on lines through the Medway Towns and between Maidstone and Gravesend over Easter.

Richard Dean, Train Services Director at Southeastern, said: "This is important improvement work that will benefit passengers in the long term but we know it will have inconvenienced some over the Easter weekend, I'd like to thank all our passengers for their understanding and patience while Network Rail completed part of its major investment programme to improve the railway."

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.