Major railway upgrades between Manchester Victoria, Rochdale and Stalybridge have been completed, with further works to come in the weeks ahead.

Work took place between 31 July and 15 August to completely reconstruct railway bridges on Dantzic Street and Queens Road and strengthen and waterproof Bromley Street and Oldham Road bridges.

More than 3000m of track was upgraded and track remodelled between Manchester Victoria and Stalybridge and 17 new signals were also installed.

Want to see a time-lapse of the works carried out between Manchester and Rochdale / Stalybridge over the last two weeks?! Of course you do! ⬇️ pic.twitter.com/2aQJ7tFRMg

— Northern 🚆 (@northernassist) August 18, 2021

Further work will take place this Sunday (22 August), plus on Sundays throughout September and the weekend of 2 and 3 October, to make the final changes with less disruption to passengers. 

TransPennine Express (TPE) services will again be diverted into Manchester Piccadilly, with TPE services between Manchester Piccadilly and Liverpool being operated by rail replacement buses on Sundays. Buses will also replace Northern services between Stalybridge and Manchester Victoria calling at Ashton.

The work is being carried out to enable more trains and faster trains to run in future. The newly renovated bridges now allow increased weight loading of more trains and the new and remodelled track will allow trains to run at faster speeds.

The work is also a crucial part of the multi-billion-pound Transpennine Route Upgrade to improve connectivity in the North of England by providing faster, more reliable services for passengers travelling between Manchester, Huddersfield, Leeds and York.

Neil Holm, Transpennine Route Upgrade Director for Network Rail, said: “Our teams have worked around the clock over the past 16 days to improve journeys for passengers.

“We carefully planned the work to keep passengers moving during the upgrade. I want to say a big thank you to passengers for their patience while the improvements took place.”

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