We’re upgrading parts of our railway around Crewe in Cheshire this Christmas and New Year.
Crewe is an important junction for freight journeys on the West Coast Main Line and this work will help us continue moving essential goods through here for years to come.
Upgrading the freight network
We’ve been carrying out major improvements to the Basford Hall independent lines around Crewe station since 2022. These independent lines are an offshoot of the West Coast Main Line that take freight trains around Crewe station and back onto the mainline.
We’ve already upgraded the drainage and track here but we’re now investing nearly £200m to carry out a full resignalling at Crewe.
We’re moving control of signalling from three signal boxes at Salop Goods, Crewe Sorting Sidings North, and Basford Hall signal box to the state-of-the-art Manchester rail operating centre. This upgrade will help modernise the signalling – or traffic – system here.
Jamie Morris, a programme manager at Network Rail, said: “The signalling upgrade work at Basford Hall independent lines means that essential goods can travel by freight up and down the country safely and efficiently for years to come.”
“Food and construction materials are just some of the tens of thousands of goods transported every month by our freight network.”
An important freight line
The West Coast Main Line is one of Europe’s busy mixed-use railway lines. It helps hundreds of freight trains move essential goods up and down the country every day. And the independent lines at Crewe are used by virtually all freight trains passing through Crewe on the West Coast Main Line.
Several of these freight trains carry high street and supermarkets goods that you’re likely to use. They also often carry exported and imported goods coming in and out of Britain – another essential building block of our economy.
Many of the freight trains using these independent lines also carry aggregate goods mined from quarries in North Wales, the Northwest and Peak District. These good are particularly important to the building industry and help keep builders building.
We’re committed to growing the freight sector – a greener, often faster and more efficient way of moving good around the country. Work like this is an essential part of that.
Christmas works
Our teams are carrying out the work over Christmas and will need to shut the railway around Crewe for our colleagues to do this safely and efficiently.
This means a reduced train service will run from Crewe station between Tuesday 24 December 2024 and Friday 3 January 2025.
There are rail replacement bus services between Crewe and Sandbach, Shrewsbury, Stafford, Chester, Liverpool South Pwy, Stockport and Stoke on Thursday 27 December. After that there are various changes to the timetable until 3 January.
Please check before you travel.
