Engineers from Network Rail put in over 10,000 hours over the festive season at Manchester Victoria installing 74 foundations and some of the steel work for the overhead line equipment.
The aim is to have electric trains operating from Manchester Victoria to Liverpool next December as part of the £400m North West Electrification Programme.
Martin Frobisher, area director for Network Rail, paid tribute to the hard work completed in difficult conditions. ‘Our engineers have successfully completed much of the work to allow electric trains to run from Manchester to Liverpool starting from December, providing passengers with quicker, cleaner and more frequent services. They did this despite some very difficult weather over the Christmas and New Year holiday.’
In the station, engineers installed 42 fixtures to hold the overhead wires to the roof. To the east of the station, under Cheetham Hill road bridge, 400m of track was removed to allow the track to be lowered to create the headroom required for overhead lines.
This required 1300 tonnes of spoil to be removed before the track was re-laid with almost 1000 tonnes of new ballast. Meanwhile, work continued on the £44m project to renovate the station and install the new roof which will be completed later this year.
