What is the East Coast upgrade?
The East Coast Upgrade is a programme of work on the East Coast Main Line connects the major cities in the North and South of the United Kingdom – London, Cambridgeshire, the North of England and Scotland.
During the planned work to the East Coast Upgrade a vast programme of engineering work including new railway installation, upgrade to existing rail routes and strict planning throughout will provide a reliable and punctual service to all passengers. By ensuring the ability to add more capacity for people to use the service in the future (and the upgrades to the railway technology behind the East Coast Upgrade) this project will allow quieter, faster and (most importantly) more environmentally friendly electric trains to use the railway route.
By providing travellers with quicker and more reliable journeys, more frequent services, more seats and an overall more environmentally friendly footprint, the East Coast Main Line upgrade will be completed over a number of years to provide great infrastructure connecting the North and South of the UK.
With a total of £1.2 billion invested in the planned upgrades to the East Coast Main Line, this project has several key areas which are being focused on.
London King’s Cross
A multi-million-pound investment was made to renew not only the track at this extremely busy station, but to also improve signalling and the overhead line equipment on the approach to the station to improve the overall service.
Werrington (North of Peterborough)
A brand new section of railway was created to dive under the existing East Coast Main Line at Werrington to improve the service. This was created so trains (such as slower freight trains) and reach the line to and from Spalding (Great North Great Eastern Line) without having to cross the main line and potentially cause service disruptions or delays.
This work has been completed and freed up important space on the East Coast Main Line for extra passenger services.
Stevenage
A brand new platform and track at Stevenage station was opened in August 2020 to allow trains from the Hertford North line to terminate and head back towards London without using the capacity on existing tracks. This work was completed to enable more services to run in future (while improving reliability of services and extra resilience).
Power Supply Upgrade
All along the East Coast Main line, the planned upgrades are boosting the power supply to enable the use of quieter, faster and more environmentally cleaner electric trains to be able to use the railway. Work is being completed at a total of 46 work sites along the route and new trains have already been able to access the infrastructure (such as LNER’s Azuma and Hull Trains’ Paragon). With more electric trains being able to use the route in future, this paves the way for a more environmentally friendly railway network.
Rail BI are proud to be the Business Intelligence application that powered the initial cost estimation and scenario analysis activities that helped to determine the viability of the East Coast Upgrade.
For more information on this project, please visit https://eastcoastupgrade.co.uk/