Atkins signs design contract as Chiltern Railways creates new main line

Atkins, the engineering design consultancy, is to undertake the detailed design of the Chiltern Railways upgrade, currently one of the UK’s most important and technically challenging rail modernisation programmes.

The £250 million ‘Evergreen 3’ scheme will reduce journey times by 20% along the M40 corridor to London, bringing London Marylebone within 100 minutes of Birmingham Moor Street station, and Banbury to within an hour. The upgrade work will be finished in 2011, providing an alternative to the West Coast route during the redevelopment of New Street station in Birmingham – a project that Atkins is lead consultant on, providing engineering design, architectural, rail and ecological services.

David Tonkin, managing director of Atkins’ rail business said: “As with many major infrastructure projects, Atkins has supported Evergreen 3 from the preliminary design stage but as the detailed design progresses our role will broaden.

“We now have 250 engineers involved in the project and along with providing unrivalled expertise in signalling design, Atkins’ track and station designers will be working with our civil and rail engineers, geotechnical experts, surveyors, ecologists, and environmental and telecoms engineers. A project such as Evergreen 3 requires an exceptional array of skills and it will give Atkins the chance to showcase the depth and breadth of our engineering and design capability.”

The first stage of the Evergreen 3 upgrade from Banbury to London’s Marylebone station will be followed by the construction of a new rail link between Oxford and the Chiltern Mainline via a new stretch of line in Bicester. This is subject to Transport and Works Act approval. The link, planned for delivery by 2013, is set to be the first new rail line between London and a major UK city in over 100 years. Atkins has also won the contract to provide the detailed design on this new section.

The infrastructure upgrade will be carried out by BAM Nuttall under their contract with Chiltern Railways. Atkins, will sub-contract to BAM Nuttall.

The initial upgrade will be delivered in time for the London 2012 Games for which Atkins is the official engineering design services provider. Across the rail sector Atkins is also delivering the state-of-the-art ERTMS rail signalling system in Denmark, the largest single signalling investment in Europe. Atkins is also providing tunnel, station and architectural design for London’s Crossrail, and has completed geotechnical, track and station design on Gautrain, South Africa’s first high speed line which opened three days before the World Cup.