Seven days of emergency repair work has been completed by Network Rail allowing the railway to reopen between Rainham and Sittingbourne following a landslip at Newington in Kent.

The landslip took place on Friday the 23rd of February, after a period of heavy rainfall that afternoon which led to Network Rail’s geotechnical and structures experts finding a huge crack of 40 metres alongside material which had moved approximately 5 metres down the embankment.

Due to the aftermath of the landslip the railway line was closed for safety purposes.

Network Rail organised a repair plan, mobilising engineers and equipment necessary for the repair to the site allowing work to get underway on the 26th of February.

Work took place around the clock over seven days in order to stabilise the embankment and get the line back open this morning (4th March) with the first service, the Gillingham to Sheerness-on-Sea Southeastern service operating at 05.05 this morning.

The emergency work saw the embankment rebuilt and involved:

• Excavation of slipped material
• Creation of a new profile for the embankment
• Steps cut into the slope
• Backfilling 3,000 tonnes of stone to lessen the gradient and strengthen the embankment

The work saw 50 wagons of new stone delivered to the site where a rail-mounted digger moved the stone to the embankment. The slipped material was removed from the site by road.

Network Rail has now installed noise and vibration sensors at the site to monitor the embankment continually.

I’m really sorry for the disruption customers experienced following the landslip. The safety of our customers and colleagues has always our number one priority and we didn’t take the decision to close this critical part of the railway lightly.

Our teams have now completed emergency repairs, having worked tirelessly over the last week to repair and stabilise the embankment as quickly as possible, working closely with our colleagues at Southeastern to develop a plan so that our customers were still able to get to where they need to go.

I want to thank customers and local residents for their patience and understanding while we completed this work.

Bob Coulson, Network Rail’s Kent Route Infrastructure Director

On behalf of everyone at Southeastern, I’d like to sincerely thank our customers for their patience and our colleagues at Network Rail for their work to get this important stretch of railway reopened and on time.

Normal services can now resume between Sittingbourne and Rainham in the morning and we look forward to welcoming our customers back. I’d also encourage customers who were disrupted but haven’t yet claimed their compensation, to do so. We recognise this was a majorly disruptive event and we are keen to help customers wherever possible.

Kevin Warn, General Manager South at Southeastern