Passengers at Reading now have a much bigger, better station after Network Rail successfully completed the primary a part of an 11-day programme of upgrades over the Easter weekend.
More than 2,000 engineers from Network Rail and its team of contractors worked round-the-clock from late Thursday evening through to the early hours of Tuesday morning to hold out work which might ordinarily have taken around 20 full weekends.
As a result, the station now has two new entrances, four new platforms and a brand new 110-metre long, 30-metre-wide passenger bridge, with escalators and lifts providing step-free access to the hot platforms.
Graham Denny, Network Rail senior programme manager, station works, said: “It’s gone absolutely brilliantly. We opened one of the improvements over the weekend and this morning we opened the recent platforms, which have been able to receive the primary train when it came in at 04:40.
“The station was able to opt for passengers, and the folks we’ve had through already seem more than happy with the implications.”
Reading station is utilized by 14m passengers annually, with numbers predicted to greater than double to 30m by 2030. Station users will now have extra space, easier access to platforms, and new passenger information screens.
The new platforms have two sections, A and B, to enable trains of varying lengths to occupy different ends of the platform collectively, improving efficiency and timings for patrons. Each now has escalator and step-free access to the brand new footbridge, with the prevailing platforms because of follow suit by 8 April.
Over the arriving months, more platforms might be upgraded, with the station elements of the project due for final completion by February 2014. The programme as an entire will upgrade the station and unblock the bottleneck at the railway serving it – so trains won’t ought to queue while approaching the station. All work is scheduled to be completed by 2015, a year prior to schedule.
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