Network Rail engineers have been hard at work over Christmas in order to bring improved reliability for passengers on the London Victoria to East Croydon route.

The huge £160m ongoing project will see the removal and replacement of worn-out 1970s signalling for lines from London Victoria and out as far as Balham and Streatham hill where over 90 new signals will be put up, new points installed, new train detection equipment put in place and upgrades to power supplies and control moved to a trailblazing control centre at Three Bridges.

A large part of the project began on Christmas Day, with the work continuing until Monday the 3rd of January 2022.

During this planned working period, no trains will be running between East Croydon and London Victoria, with the majority of trains being diverted to London Bridge.

Katie Frost, Sussex route Director, Network Rail, said: “Nine days is a long time to close a main line railway and I know that a lot of people will be asking why we’ve got to do this now. The truth is that with fewer people travelling during the festive period this is still the best way for us to do large-scale improvements and if we had to do this work at weekends, we would be closing the railway far more often and disrupting far more people.

“So I’d like to thank our passengers and neighbours for their patience with us, and urge people who are travelling over the festive season to plan their journeys before they leave.

“This project will have a huge impact on the reliability of the railway for years to come and it will be worth the wait.”

Chris Fowler, Customer Services Director for Southern, said: “These engineering programmes are essential to give our customers the reliable, on-time services they rightly expect. We’re working closely with Network Rail and other transport partners to ensure our customers can get where they need to be when services are affected. Some journeys will take considerably longer than normal, so please check routes and times in advance.”

The 9-day closure will see Pouparts Junction which is a key stretch of the railway close to Battersea be completely rebuilt, with signal gantries put in place to house the signalling equipment, cables routes and power supply points along the lines from Balham to London Victoria.

Working in week-long chunks called ‘blockades’ means that Network Rail can circumvent the need for long series of weekend or bank holiday closures over a period of a number of years.