The Edinburgh-Glasgow line, which sustained serious damage due to flooding near Polmont on 12 August, is set to reopen on Monday, 21 September.
Due to a severe amount of rainfall, the adjacent Union Canal burst its banks, washing away large sections of track and undermining 300m of the railway’s embankments. During the last six weeks engineers have fully rebuilt the foundations of the line, replacing more than 15,000 tons of soils and stone under the track.
The works also involved laying 1km of new double-track, which has required more than 4,500m of new rails, 4,424 concrete sleepers and 10,000t of new ballast. All in all, these works required 27 engineering trains. More than 3,000m of signalling cables have been re-laid and two new twin track overhead power gantries installed.
“The scale of the challenge faced by those repairing the damage to this vital route was huge and that they have delivered this so promptly is testament to the hard work and the dedication of staff across Scotland's Railway.
“I'd like to thank everyone involved for enabling services to be restored for passengers sooner than first anticipated. I'd also like to thank rail users for their patience while this work was ongoing.
“It is clear that severe weather events will continue to have an impact on our transport networks in future years to come and that is why we are taking steps to add further resilience by making climate change mitigation a central theme of our National Transport Strategy.”
This flooding event occurred on the same day as the Stonehaven derailment between Aberdeen and Glasgow, where the severe rainfall resulted in landslips covering the line.
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