Trans Pennine Route Upgrade
Trans Pennine Route Upgrade
We supported a multi-billion programme to upgrade the vital Trans Pennine Route between Leeds and Manchester.
Network Rail’s upgrade will transform journeys across the North, better connecting towns and cities like Manchester, Huddersfield, Leeds and York. It will electrify the line, double tracks in key locations, enhance stations, and expand freight capacity.
The route is a complex one that combines a number of different historic companies, stretching back to the Leeds and Selby Railway of 1830-34, the world’s second oldest trunk route. This is quite unlike the homogeneity of, for example, the Great Western Mainline.
Our work was wide-ranging, comprising a route-wide listing review of several hundred structures on behalf of Network Rail and Historic England, an early options analysis with our engineers for electrification works to listed stations, bridges and viaducts, and a Statement of Significance to underpin the complex consents process. We demonstrated that its heritage significance was multifaceted, and our Statement of Significance was the product of workshops with local authorities and Historic England to agree a common understanding of not just the importance of individual structures, but the interaction of the route with the Pennine landscape and the significance of the line in the region’s economic and social history.
We also assessed two cast-iron bridges built in the 1940s across the River Calder and Hebble Navigation in West Yorkshire, which are amongst the world’s oldest and largest cast-iron bridges still in use on the railways. Our assessment enabled Crawshaw Woods Bridge to be carefully relocated, enabling off-site restoration and height adjustments for electrification. The bridge will be reinstated, retaining its heritage significance character while supporting the phased modernisation of the railways.
Client: Network Rail