Discover more about the people who run Network Rail, our commitment to safety and sustainability and how we connect Britain through our infrastructure.
Our work keeps Britain moving. From maintaining and upgrading thousands of miles of track to delivering major infrastructure projects, we ensure the railway is safe, reliable, and sustainable.
Whether you're planning a journey or need station information, we can help. Discover everything from accessibility and safety to how we manage disruptions and support passengers.
We’re building a better railway for a better Britain—and we need passionate people to help us do it. Whether you're just starting out, changing direction, or looking to grow your career, we offer a wide range of opportunities.
We must manage the cost of running the railway and become more efficient. The more efficient we are, the more we can invest for passengers. We’ve been entrusted public money and it’s our duty to spend it wisely.
Delivering at SPEED
We’ve challenged ourselves to halve the time and cost of our engineering. This applies when we build new infrastructure. It also includes regular maintenance and repairs to keep the railway running smoothly.
It’s a transformational shift in how we develop, plan and deliver new infrastructure projects and engineering. We want to be faster, better and cheaper. Through the Network Rail and DfT Rail SPEED programme, we’ve looked at 11 key areas to cut bureaucracy. This will free-up time and let us focus on doing the things that matter, safely. We’re applying that learning to save billions and cut years off project delivery
New technology, innovation and working smarter
We’re exploring a portfolio of new technologies to speed-up our work, on and off the track. We’re implementing new streamlined processes and structures that make us more agile, and more effective at what we do. And we’re looking at innovative ways of working – better planning, better deals, better designs – that will allow us to deliver our plans for passengers at lower cost.
By 2024, we will deliver £4bn of efficiencies in operations, maintenance, and renewals (running the railway) by pursuing better value and doing more for less.
By 2024, we will deliver approximately £2bn of efficiencies enhancements and new infrastructure projects (building the railway) by squeezing every penny of value out of every pound invested.
£1.6bn private sector investment
We are working to help make it easier for third parties to work with us and invest in projects on the railway, including improving partner engagement through our specialist business development teams, simplifying standards, publicising investment opportunities and offering projects out to market. We are targeting bringing-in at least £1.6bn of external funding by 2024. This helps our funding go further, injecting essential commercial and private sector expertise into Network Rail and reducing our burden on the public purse.
Learning from lessons library
To help share knowledge across the industry, improve processes, reduce cost and speed-up the delivery of our projects, we’ve opened-up our ‘learning from lessons’ library to the entire industry. The library is an online repository of lessons, pictures, videos and documents from a wide range of projects and major programmes, including those of our delivery partners. It showcases best practice, but also highlights where we could do better so future projects can improve. You will need to register to request access to the learning from lessons library and complete a short training session if you want to upload content.
Below are some examples of what we are doing to improve efficiency.
The blockade was part of our project to renew the Agar Grove overbridge in Camden, London. During the blockade, alongside delivering the bridge renewal, we carried out maintenance, renewals and enhancements activities. These included a significant number of overhead line equipment (OLE) renewals, where teams utilised LiDAR surveys to produce the OLE design packages both quickly and with a high degree of accuracy.
Our aim was to deliver as much work as possible within the blockade. These works have improved asset performance and reliability, meaning passengers and freight-users experience better journeys.
The Speed Up Sunday initiative provides an efficiency opportunity of £2.1m every year towards our CP7 target.
We’re removing two services going south and two services going north, starting these services 51 minutes later, but arriving into their destination only 20 to 34 minutes later. So, we’re speeding up the service, but allowing greater and longer maintenance access.
This extra hour gives us greater flexibility in the jobs we can plan and deliver in our normal possession opportunities at weekends and the collaborative working means that we can explore different options, benefitting the industry as well as customers.
This initiative contributes £2.1m to our industry efficiencies. This should see a £1.2m increase in revenue within East Midland Railway’s business and a £900,000 reduction in cost within Network Rail’s business.
The Torque Gun project provides an efficiency opportunity of £11.1m towards our CP7 target across the Wales and Western route.
We need to ensure that those nuts and bolts on our railway are done up to the correct torque levels to ensure that the railway stays safe and reliable.
The torque gun is a tool that allows you to measure the rotational clamping force of nuts and bolts. It’s designed as an ergonomic tool, also including reporting software that connects to the tool and sends all the readings to it once the bolts are done up.
The torque is preloaded on a tablet, and the tablet talks to the torque gun. This equipment gives you a right first-time compliance and safety opportunity. It only requires two people and there are a number of health and safety benefits, including reduction in HAVS (hand-arm vibration syndrome).
There’s been a huge explosion in the deer population in the UK since 2020.
In 2024, the East Coast route incurred nearly 17,000 minutes in train delay due to deer incursion or deer strike across the whole route. We estimate anything between about £50,000 to £60,000 per deer strike.
The automated deer deterrent system uses sound and vision sensors to identify when a deer approaches the track. Once it detects the deer, it sets off an alarm that warns the animal away. Artificial intelligence and cameras then monitor the deer’s movement until it’s moved a safe distance away from the boundary of the railway.
We’ve tested it for for twelve months and seen around a 20% reduction in animal incursions.
The devices themselves are low cost, they’ve got an incredibly long battery life and are quick to install.
A pantograph is essentially a mechanical arm fitted to the top of an electric train that contacts the overhead line providing power to the vehicle and all of its systems. Traditionally, in the UK pantographs are completely conductive but under this Research and Development project the pantograph ‘horn’ (the curved part at both ends of the structure) has been insulated. The pantograph will be able to operate at a lower height, reducing both the required electrical clearance to the roof of the vehicle and the amount of pantograph gauge clearances works.
Trials have been taking place on Wales and Western and North West and Central regions.
What will this mean?
We cannot afford to convert the railway to completely electric at our current rates; we have to reduce the cost of electrification. Technology like the composite pantograph horn allows us to reduce the amount of bridge clearance works required when we convert the railway to electric. This means a significant reduction as a result to disruption to passengers using the network and lineside neighbours affected by works.
Working away at bridge clearance
Composite pantograph horns is one of a number of projects in the Cost-Efficient Electrification portfolio that have been designed to reduce the volume of bridge clearance works when electrifying lines and the projects have the potential to reduce the cost of electrification by a third.
Making the network safer for everybody
Increasing clearances from standing surfaces to live 25kV equipment will also introduce a key safety benefit on existing electrified lines, especially in public spaces like station areas where the risk of passengers accidentally coming into contact with electricity will be reduced.
Finding new ways of working
Electrification of the infrastructure allows Network Rail the opportunity to reduce CO2 emissions and improve capacity. To do that we need to deliver new electrification more efficiently and more safely.
A new app used as part of the electrical isolation process is targeting £9m of benefits in North West and Central (NW&C).
Remote securing app
To work on an electrified network, our engineers must first turn off the power to make the site safe. To take an isolation is a long and laborious process, its not just as easy as flipping a switch.
Working with the electrical safety delivery programme, colleagues in the NW&C are implementing a remote securing app. The app will allow the person on site to secure the isolation and, when finished, enable a quicker hand back. This will allow isolations to be completed more quickly and more safely.
Currently isolations on new infrastructure can take up to an hour but the new app will reduce the time it takes by up to 20 minutes. This will give the teams more productive time to work on the infrastructure.
Safer and quicker
The infrastructure cannot be energised until the person doing the work authorises this via the app. The use of technology will help improve electrical safety, will allow the railway to run more efficiently and will enable improvements in passenger and public safety through quicker responses to emergencies.
Network Rail has committed to saving £4 billion pounds in this control period
Across NW&C there are approximately 20,000 isolations per year
Remote securing of isolations will save approximately 20 minutes per isolation
Across CP7 it’s hoped the app will help to realise £9m of benefits in NW&C and £11m in other locations An alternative solution for Remote Securing involving a Trapped Key is being developed by Scotland and Wales and Western Regions
Traditional timber and concrete sleepers account for 24% of the railway’s carbon emissions in track construction. The implementation of new, recycled sleepers is becoming business as usual across our network, rubber-stamping Network Rail’s leadership status when it comes to sustainability. By investing in sustainable materials on our infrastructure we are truly building a railway for future generations that is green and economically efficient. The target aim for this activity is to reduce the embodied carbon in sleepers by 50% by 2025 and to improve circularity or track materials to reduce their environmental impact.
Empowerment of a strategic working group to fast-track innovation
In February 2022, Network Rail Technical Authority (TA) commenced a working group to proactively manage the future design and supply of railway sleepers using business as usual resources. The group contained members from the TA Track team, NR supply Chain Operations. TA Sustainability team, Commercial and Procurement strategists and track Route Engineers.
The empowerment of this working group allowed key decisions and approvals to be made by focusing on the sustainability benefits along with business needs.
Environmental and financial windfall
Composite sleepers will deliver a wide range of performance, value and environmental benefits to the network, when compared to hardwood. Whole life value savings of between £1,801 and £4,387 could be expected per composite sleeper installed. Composite Sleeper volumes for 2024/25 are forecast at 40,000 per annum, therefore the minimum total saving per annum will be £1.4 million It will also save over 30 million kgCO2e and reduce NR’s impact on deforestation in line with UK Government commitments to reverse deforestation.
Part of the wider track picture
The driver for change is to improve sustainability within track. Recycled sleepers form part of the wider strategy to install the lowest kgCO2e possible within plain-line track renewal construction by 2025, including all track materials, construction plant and site welfare.
