RAIL passengers in East Hampshire should benefit from more reliable services into London Waterloo thanks to Bank Holiday engineering works.

Network Rail completed the latest upgrade works on tracks between London Waterloo and Barnes in the capital over the weekend - the latest part of hundreds of millions of pounds worth of improvements across the rail network to replace ageing equipment and upgrade station facilities.

The work, completed on time as part of Network Rail’s Railway Upgrade Plan, delivered a series of track and station upgrades between London Waterloo and Barnes station, including:

• A £350,000 slice of a £5m upgrade of the points at Waterloo station

• Installing signal and communications equipment between Queenstown Road and Clapham Junction station as part of an £800m investment across the Wessex route

• Renewing tracks between Wandsworth Town and Putney station

• Renewing the surface on platforms at Wandsworth Town station

Timelapse footage from the weekend shows the work at Waterloo station, where a team of engineers worked around the clock to replace three sections of track.

Lee McCarthy, programme manager at Network Rail said, “The work we have delivered as part of our Railway Upgrade Plan focused on one of the most heavily used sections of the railway in Britain.

“Our work to bring the Waterloo International Terminal back into use is well under way, and by 2018 capacity at the station will have increased by 30 per cent so it’s vital that we continue investing to provide a better railway for the growing number of passengers.

“I’d like to thank passengers for their patience while we carried out our upgrades this weekend.”