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Southern Highlands residents will see an army of rail workers hit the rail line over the next few weeks, preparing for and delivering millions of dollars of essential railway maintenance work, the Australian Rail Track Corporation (ARTC) said today.
“Preparations are already underway in earnest, delivering rail, preparing scaffolding and dropping off supplies, before we start the mammoth rail maintenance program,” an ARTC spokesperson said.
From Friday 2 September until 6pm Tuesday 6 September ARTC employees and its contractors will deliver around 50 projects at worksites across the rail network from the Southern Highlands right through the Riverina to Albury.
“This work is critical to ensuring the safety and reliability of the rail network, and is part of our annual maintenance program,” the spokesperson said.
“While we previously delivered this major shutdown maintenance work in the Christmas period, this year based on feedback from our customers, we are delivering it during September to minimise disruption on the train running program over the course of the year.
$7 million worth of rail maintenance work including re-railing, bridge works, turnout replacements, track undercutting and signalling maintenance will take place.
ARTC also has heavy rail grinding track machines operating in a continuous basis from the Sydney metropolitan area right through to Albury.
“While most of the work will be delivered during daylight hours, the nature of some projects means some work will unavoidably take place overnight.
“Sometimes we need to conduct work in a continuous fashion during a maintenance shutdown because it is the only way to deliver the pure size of the project efficiently and safely.
“It’s much us to package the work in a set window of time when there are either no or fewer trains running and is also far more efficient to package the vast amount of work needed into a single five-day period rather than spread over many weeks and in-between live running rail traffic.”
“We’d like to thank the community for their patience with us while this important work is delivered.
“We would also like to advise motorists to take care, slow down and be cautious of trucks entering and exiting work sites around the rail corridor from 30 August through to 6 September.”
While ARTC is working to minimise impacts on passenger services as much as possible, please visit www.nswtrainlink.info or www.sydneytrains.info for specific information on what train services may see replacement buses.
ENDS
Media contact: Bas Bolyn, ARTC, 0477 340 658
Notes. See pdf above for table of works around Southern Highlands region.
Members of the community should visit: http://www.artc.com.au/community/track-work/ for more info.