Published on: Friday, 19 October 2018
Last updated: Friday, 19 October 2018
Rail passengers travelling between Norwich and Lowestoft and Great Yarmouth are reminded that some train services are being replaced with buses for nine days as work resumes on a major overhaul of signalling on the rail line.
Network Rail is investing £68 million in replacing one of the oldest signalling systems in the country with brand new modern signals which should help improve the reliability of the Greater Anglia train service on the line.
The work resumes this Saturday (20 October) and continues for nine days, until Sunday 28 October. During this time all trains on the Norwich to Great Yarmouth and Norwich to Lowestoft lines will be replaced by buses.
Ipswich to Lowestoft train services will continue to operate Monday to Friday, but trains will be replaced by buses between Lowestoft and Beccles on the weekends of Saturday 20 and Sunday 21 October and Saturday 27 and Sunday 28 October, starting and ending at Saxmundham for the first and last trains of the day.
Revised timetables are available on the Greater Anglia website. Customers are advised to check before they travel using the website, app or Twitter.
Due to complexities of the work, the train line from Reedham to Great Yarmouth via Berney Arms will be closed from Saturday 20 October until early April 2019.
From Saturday 20 October to Sunday 28 October, customers travelling from Reedham and Cantley will need to catch a bus to Acle, where they can then connect with another bus service. For full details of this service please check the timetables on the Greater Anglia website before travelling.
From Monday 29 October until early April 2019, customers from Reedham and Cantley can travel by train to Brundall or Norwich, where they catch the train to Great Yarmouth. This also applies to rail passengers from Buckenham on Sundays.
Throughout this period, there will be no service from Berney Arms, which is inaccessible by road, and has very few passengers especially during autumn and winter.
James Reeve, Greater Anglia area customer service manager with responsibility for these lines, said: “We apologise to customers who are inconvenienced while this work is going ahead, but we have set up the best possible alternative to make sure customers can complete their journeys.
We thought long and hard to see if there was a viable alternative to closing Berney Arms from October to early April, but given the very small number of customers who use it and its inaccessibility by road, there was no other option.”
Meliha Duymaz, Network Rail’s route managing director for Anglia said: “The next phase of this project is vital to continue to transform the railway as part of our Railway Upgrade Plan. While I understand that closing the railway is an inconvenience I would like to reassure passengers that this work will deliver tangible benefits to rail journeys across the Wherry lines, increasing safety and reliability using modern signaling technology. I’d like to thank passengers for their patience while we carry out this important work and urge anyone using these services to check their journey plans ahead of travelling.”