Railway between Wigan and Bolton is electrified

Wigan Today

Christian Irwin, Network Rail's North West and central region capital delivery director, speaks about the power being turned on for the new cables in the £100m project to electrify the line between Wigan and Bolton

Transcript

00:00Yeah, so today's a big milestone to get the energisation of the electrification system.

00:06It gives us several months now of testing the system, making sure that it's working

00:11as it's designed to work, and then what we'll go through is a process that will bring it

00:15into operational service, and at the latter part of 2025 we'll start operating electric

00:21trains on the railway between Wigan and Bolton.

00:23What are the main benefits of electrifying a section of the railway?

00:27I mean, one of the biggest benefits of electrification is its decarbonisation.

00:31We're not running trains using diesel anymore, we'll be running trains through this section

00:35using highly green electric energy, which is fantastic.

00:41Trains will be quieter, trains will be more efficient, and our passengers will get a better

00:46experience travelling through this area.

00:48As Capital Delivery Director, this must be a really proud moment to see all of this infrastructure

00:55now in place, and it's switched on and working.

00:58Yeah, this scheme's been operating since 2018.

01:02We have, it's a great opportunity to electrify another part of the North West network, and

01:07you know, the aspiration is to just provide the greenest journeys that we can for our

01:12passengers, and it's a really proud moment.

01:15It's been a lot of effort, a lot of hard work, we've had some difficult circumstances over

01:19the last few weeks with lots of cable theft, but we've recovered that situation and it's

01:23just a really proud moment to deliver an energised railway that we can start to now finalise

01:29and get ready for passenger services later on this year.

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