Trans Pennine Route Upgrade
Trans Pennine Route Upgrade
We supported the £10 billion programme to upgrade the vital Trans Pennine Route between Leeds and Manchester with a number of projects, including 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.
Our work also extended to assessing two fine cast-iron bridges built in the 1940s across the River Calder and Hebble Navigation in West Yorkshire, amongst the oldest and largest cast-iron bridges still in use on the railways
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. Its heritage significance is therefore multifaceted, and the Statement of Significance is 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.
Client: Network Rail