Residents braced for EIGHT weekends of noisy late night engineering work on Gospel Oak and Barking line

Engineers will begin work at 1am on either Saturdays or Sundays and won’t finish until 4am on the following Mondays
Roger Marks/Flickr
Dick Murray30 May 2017

Thousands of residents living close to the Gospel Oak and Barking line were warned today to expect eight consecutive weekends of sleepless nights because of late running work on the £130 million upgrade.

Starting this coming weekend, engineers will begin work at 1am on either Saturdays or Sundays and won’t finish until 4am on the following Mondays.

In addition to the noisy and floodlit work installing overhead powerlines, construction workers will use specialist vehicles which emit a piercing horn sound every time they move to alert staff working on the ground.

In a letter to neighbours, Network Rail (NR) warns “disturbance is unavoidable, but we will make every effort to minimise every unnecessary noise.”

The letter, from Paul Lennon, NR’s community relations manager for London and the South East, said staff have been briefed on “working responsibly” to keep the noise down.

Commuters wait for trains during delays at Gospel Oak station
‏@alesbon

It warns of further weekend closures later in the year.

Industry sources say this could mean a further month-long shutdown of the line – though NR refused to confirm or deny the claim describing it as “speculation at this point.”

Caroline Pidgeon, Liberal Democrat member of the London Assembly and leader of the all-party transport committee, called on NR to “come clean” over future line closures.

She said: “Passengers were promised a year ago the upgrade work would be finally completed by the end of June 2017.

“NR is still not providing details about the expected full closure of the line that will be necessary to complete the electrification work.

“Both residents living close to the line and passengers have already suffered enough. It is time NR came clean and gave people advanced notice of the full schedule of works necessary to complete this vital electrification programme.”

The tri-funded project between the Department for Transport, Transport for London (TfL) and NR has been beset with problems as revealed by the Evening Standard in February.

Electrification work on the 14-mile long line used by 10,000 people a day which TfL pledged would be completed by the end of next month could take until the end of the year.

Faults included incorrect design and late delivery of the huge masts and structures to carry overhead power cables; pile drivers breaking through sewers and a road bridge having to be “realigned” because there was not enough clearance to run power cables underneath.

The line reopened at the end of February following an eight month.

The Lennon letter admits: “The full schedule of work to electrify the route was not completed during this time owing to design inaccuracies and late delivery of materials.”

The line will close again on the Sundays of 4, 11, 18 and 25 June and 2 July. It will then close for the weekends of 8 and 9 July, 15 and 16 July and 22 and 23 July.

In May last year TfL promised: “From February 2017 onwards further works to have the line ready for electric trains will take place during evenings and weekends only and will be completed by the end of June 2017.”

The project is designed to replace two-car diesel trains with four-car electric trains from January next year. Work has included major work on the tracks and rebuilding four bridges.

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