Network Rail has confirmed that the railway line between Leamington Spa and Banbury will reopen by Easter. The key route between Birmingham and London Marylebone and Birmingham, the Thames Valley, the south coast and the port of Southampton has been closed since 31 January following a landslip near Harbury, a few miles south of Leamington Spa.
“The line provides a vital link for more than 130 passenger and freight trains every day and our engineers are working tirelessly to make the landslip safe and make it possible to reopen the line within the next six weeks,” Mark Carne, chief executive of Network Rail, said.
The huge landslip saw over 350,000 tonnes of earth threaten the railway line at this location and since then Network Rail has been working around the clock to assess and repair the landslip so that the line could be safely reopened as soon as possible.
So far over 100,000 tonnes of earth have been removed from site and sophisticated monitoring equipment installed to track the continuing movement of the slip.
Photo: Network Rail
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