The UK’s ScotRail Alliance has announced plans to close the Glasgow Queen Street Tunnel for 20 weeks to carry out major engineering work.
Taking place from 20 March until 8 August, the work is part of a £60m upgrade project to renew nearly 2km of ageing slab-track that will support the introduction of faster, longer and greener trains on Scotland’s rail network later this year.
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Scope of work will include renewal of 1,800m of existing concrete slab track formation, which carries the rails through the 918m-long tunnel, according to BBC.
These trains will add more seats, reduce journey times and will have less impact on the environment.
The closure of the tunnel will see services diverted to low-level platforms or Glasgow Central, bringing timetable changes and in some cases, longer journey times.
Additional carriages will be added to services that are running to offer maximum capacity and queueing systems will be in place at Glasgow Queen Street and Edinburgh Waverley at peak times.
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By GlobalDataDue to this disruption, ScotRail has launched a dedicated webpage to ensure that customers have the required information to keep moving during the closure.
Over the coming weeks, this will be supported with advertising, business briefings and customer information at stations, on train and online.
ScotRail Alliance managing director Phil Verster said: "Glasgow Queen Street is one of the busiest stations in Scotland. Every day, tens of thousands of people travel through the station on their way to work, to college or university or to visit friends.
"People will still be able to do that while the tunnel is closed, the railway is still very much open for business. However, they will see changes to their normal journey. We want to make sure that everyone understands what these change mean for them.
"That is why we are launching our biggest ever public information campaign. In the run-up to the closure, we will be speaking directly to our customers, to businesses, and to public bodies to give them the information they need and to answer any questions that they might have."
ScotRail noted that customers can now check their own journey online with full timetables available to download from 20 February.
Image: Inside Glasgow Queen Street railway station, Scotland. Photo: courtesy of Green Lane via Wikipedia.
