Train passengers using Manchester Piccadilly will face further service disruption on two Sundays in March despite the completion of a nine-day £7.9 million track renewal project that closed the station’s main platforms.
Routine follow-up work scheduled for Sunday 1 March and Sunday 22 March will impact train services until lunchtime as engineers secure the newly installed railway foundation stone through a tamping process. Passengers planning travel on those dates are advised to check www.nationalrail.co.uk ahead of their journeys.
The announcement comes as the first trains returned to Manchester Piccadilly’s platforms 1-12 shortly after 5am on Monday 23 February following the intensive engineering work between 14-22 February that overhauled large sections of track and infrastructure across six lines.
The closure triggered one of the largest rail replacement bus operations Manchester has seen in recent memory. Over the nine-day period, 8,922 rail replacement bus services operated to maintain passenger connectivity, with one bus departing Manchester and Stockport every two and a half minutes on average in each direction.
Network Rail and Central Rail Systems Alliance engineers installed eleven new sets of points, laid 9 kilometres of signalling and telecoms cabling, replaced 4,000 timber sleepers with modern concrete equivalents, and laid 5,500 tonnes of new ballast. Signalling and lineside equipment were also upgraded across the southern approach to the North West’s busiest station.
The infrastructure being replaced dated from the late 1980s. Between April 2023 and April 2024, the Piccadilly corridor experienced 35 faults, with the upgraded equipment expected to reduce future fault frequency and associated passenger delays.
Time-lapse footage released today shows the intensity of work required to renew such extensive railway sections within the compressed timeframe. The closure also enabled station improvements including repainting and repointing platform edges, upgrading emergency lighting, and thoroughly clearing litter from tracks between platforms.
Brian Paynter, Network Rail Capital Delivery track director, thanked passengers for patience during “this once-in-a-generation upgrade,” noting that improvements to the Piccadilly corridor would “make journeys more reliable and the points and signalling systems less prone to faults – meaning fewer delays for passengers.”
Simon Elliott, network director for rail at TfGM, described the project as “a once in a generation piece of work that will future-proof journeys for people travelling to and from Manchester Piccadilly train station for years to come.”
Manchester Piccadilly serves as a key stop on the West Coast Main Line connecting London to Scotland. The station handles over 38 million passenger journeys annually, with the Piccadilly corridor estimated to carry 30 million tonnes of traffic each year across approximately 908 daily passenger services and 28 freight trains.
The completed work forms part of a broader West Coast Main Line upgrade programme with more than £400 million allocated for spending in the coming year. Further improvements are scheduled for Easter that will affect journeys for passengers travelling south to London and north towards Cumbria.
Passengers are advised to plan journeys in advance by visiting www.nationalrail.co.uk, particularly for the two March Sundays when tamping work will cause morning service disruptions and for the Easter period when additional West Coast Main Line improvements will require amended travel arrangements.
