Train Line Works

The News was given the rare opportunity to take a look behind the scenes of ongoing engineering work at Portsmouth and Southsea Train Station

Transcript

00:30So, if you could introduce yourself.

00:53Hi, my name's Shane Renyard, I'm a construction manager for Network Rail Works Delivery, we're

00:59here at Portsmouth and South Sea Station. We're renewing a track through the platform,

01:06this track is life expired or coming to its life expiration, sorry, so it needs to be renewed for

01:13the safety of the passenger trains. You might be able to see behind me, we're renewing everything,

01:20the sleepers, rails, all the components that go along with it.

01:24Amazing, and so why is this so important?

01:29So like any bit of railway, we need to keep it running and this area here does get seen a lot of

01:37trains on it and it's come to its life expiry, getting there, so it needs to be renewed for the

01:45safety and obviously for trains to keep running. Brilliant, and when is the line closed until?

01:52So this line would have been closed from early hours, Saturday just gone and it'll be open again

02:00next Saturday early hours, so it'll be a week-long blockade.

02:05Amazing, and how much work goes into this sort of closure?

02:09Oh loads, lots of man hours goes into this, not just what you're seeing now on the ground,

02:17but planning, we've been looking at this, the planning, trains, manpower, materials,

02:27some of the materials have had to come from Japan, so it's all

02:33in excess of 12 months of planning, so it's all going to one week of delivery.