Services on the Gospel Oak to Barking line near London are expected to resume tomorrow, 19 February. This line was damaged by a derailed freight wagon. The work is almost complete with all the new tracks now installed. Final critical works are being carried out over the next hours, said infrastructure manager Network Rail.

More than two and a half miles of the route between Barking and South Tottenham was damaged in the incident on 23 January. Network Rail’s engineers are working around the clock on a programme of repairs, clearing the damage, replacing 39 pieces of rail, 5,300 concrete sleepers, 900 wooden sleepers, removing and replacing 10,000 tonnes of ballast during the track replacement and replacing custom-timbers at 10 bridges.

Mammoth task

Ellie Burrows, Network Rail’s route director for Anglia said: “Works have progressed well and we are in a good position to complete everything in time for freight and passenger services to resume on Wednesday. It has been an absolutely mammoth task for our engineering teams working through some horrendous weather over the last couple of weekends, but we are nearly there.”

Just after 6am on Thursday 23 January, a freight wagon derailed between Leyton Midland Road and Walthamstow Queens Road on the Gospel Oak to Barking line, causing extensive damage. An investigation into the cause of the incident is ongoing.