NHS staff among those left stranded by Easter weekend rail shutdown
The work means bus replacements will run between Lewisham and Orpington, and Lewisham and Sidcup – hitting many NHS staff who need to reach hospitals over that weekend.
A new signalling system will be switched on from Friday 10 April to Monday 13 April rom Hither Green to Grove Park, Mottingham and Bromley North to cut delays.The work will replace an old 1970s signalling system on the Grove Park, Sidcup and Bromley North lines with a more reliable £81m system. Other changes are:
- Track circuits, which detect trains, have been replaced with 254 more reliable axle counters
- 58 new signals and nine new, easier maintained signal gantries built
- Power supply upgraded and made more resilient
- Signalling improvements to provide turnback opportunities at Hither Green, Grove Park and Lee, allowing trains to reverse if there are delays or during engineering works.
- Signal improvements at Grove Park to allow 12-car trains to stop at platform 3.
- Signalling control of the area will be transferred to the to the state-of-the-art Three Bridges route control centre, so the trains can recover more quickly when there is an incident.
- Over Easter and follow-up weekends, deep cleaning and maintenance of closed stations on the affected lines
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