Extra railway track added to £250m Staffordshire line to ease traffic
Extra railway tracks have been added to a major £250 million line development near Stafford in a bid to reduce heavy goods traffic to the site.
The new line will run along the West Coast main line at Little Bridgeford and will track materials and ballast to be delivered by train, reducing lorry deliveries and traffic on nearby roads.
New signalling equipment and line speed improvements are also being created as part of the Stafford Area Improvements Programme, which will remove the last major bottleneck on the West Coast main line at Norton Bridge.
This will allow more passenger and freight services to run between London, the Midlands and the north-west.
The work is being delivered by a group called Staffordshire Alliance, which includes Atkins, Laing O'Rourke, Network Rail and VolkerRail.
Hundreds of thousands of tons of earth have been moved at the site and eleven new bridges are being built along with 10km of new track to allow separation of fast and slow lines.
Staffordshire Alliance manager Matt Clark said: "This is a real milestone for the programme and we're delighted to have the railhead in place.
"It is great news for the programme and great news for the local community as we can take traffic off the roads and deliver our materials direct to the site without affecting the running of the railway."
Network Rail senior programme manager Ian Jones said: "We'd like to thank rail users and our local communities for their patience, particularly over the bank holiday weekend.
"The works in Stafford are of local and national benefit for passengers. It was essential we completed the work on time and means we can now get materials to the site by rail."
In the midst of the work archaeologists unearthed evidence of prehistoric settlement possibly dating back 2,500 years BC at the Norton Bridge site.
Evidence of woodlands and the lid of a butter churn have been found, along with worked wooden stakes and wood chips, on a section of waterlogged peat close to Meece Road.
A number of Victorian stoneware bottles bearing the names of breweries from Bristol to Manchester have also been unearthed, which may have been left behind by builders working on a house nearby.
