Full timetable of trains to London from Salisbury reinstated soon
A date's been set for 24th February, following a landslip four weeks ago
A normal timetable of trains between Salisbury and London Waterloo will be reinstated later this month.
Network Rail and South Western Railway have set themselves a target of Friday 24th February.
That'll be six weeks since a huge landslip at Hook in North Hampshire caused some of the lines to be left suspended in mid-air, and unsafe for services.
Since then, there's been a severely reduced timetable and replacement buses for part of the journey.
Engineers have been working to repair the embankment, even having to build their own access road, due to its remote location.
9,000 tonnes of stone have been used so far on the project.
Mark Killick, Network Rail’s Wessex route director, said:
“Fixing the landslip at Hook has been an incredibly tough and complicated job. I’m so sorry our customers will have to endure more disruption before we can reopen all four lines. Unfortunately, there is no perfect solution, but this approach is the least disruptive to our customers overall.
“We’ve taken the difficult decision to carry out the track layout work over multiple nights because I recognise how important it is to provide a direct service to and from London and the south west.
“It’s crucial this work goes ahead because customers wouldn’t see the benefits soon enough and it would cost taxpayers a fortune to reschedule and cause more disruptive closures in the future.”
More disruption to come
While the work's being completed, there's a few more changes to the timetable for next week (Monday 13th to Friday 17th February).
The last trains between Salisbury and London Waterloo will be much earlier than normal, to allow for the engineering work to be carried out.
Coming from London to Salisbury, the last service will be at 21:20 each night, while going from Salisbury to the capital, trains will stop running at 20:23.
Stuart Meek, South Western Railway’s chief operating officer, said:
“The landslip at Hook has caused our customers significant disruption for more than three weeks now, so it is welcome news to hear we are a step closer to the embankment repairs being completed.
“To give Network Rail the time they need to realign the tracks, whilst also considering the large amount of engineering work across the rest of our network, we will need to make some changes to our late night and early morning services.
“We will confirm these alterations just as soon as we can. We’re very grateful for our customers’ continued patience through what has been a frustrating period of disruption.”