North Doncaster chord

We plan to build a line of track that takes slow freight services up and over the East Coast Main Line and the busy passenger services that run on it.

£54 million is being invested into improving the railway to relieve the bottleneck at Shaftholme Junction, to the North of Doncaster.

This junction is at the heart of a railway nearly at capacity for both freight and passenger travel and, as well as creating extra seats, the project will future proof the line, creating potential for more trains.

A more reliable service

At the moment freight services, running between ports on the Humber to several Aire Valley power stations, have to run on the East Coast Main Line for up to 14 miles, disrupting passenger services running from London up to Scotland.

This also causes a bottleneck and limits capacity for both passenger and freight services. Increasing freight capacity is part of a wider Network Rail commitment to supporting freight growth and will ultimately help generate further growth of port-related businesses and support services.

Environmentally friendly

This project is part of our vision for freight that will allow many of the increasing numbers of freight containers coming into Britain’s ports to be transported by rail – one of the most environmentally friendly methods of transportation. The alternative would be to take the containers by road, adding to traffic congestion. Taking freight by rail rather than by road reduces CO2 emissions by 74%, helping the UK to improve its carbon footprint.

Next steps

The work is expected to be completed in 2013/2014 and we have to get the necessary permissions from the Infrastructure Planning Commission to complete the work.

Our application to the Infrastructure Planning Commission (IPC) has now been accepted for examination. For more information, on how you can register a representation with the IPC and to see all of our application documents, see our application documents page.