Loughborough Gap

History

As a relatively late-developed railway in the United Kingdom, the GCR was resultantly forced to take some expensive civil engineering choices to complete their route. Just north of Loughborough Central, the railway had to cross the existing Leicester section of the Grand Union Canal, before then crossing the existing Midland Main Line formation as well as avoiding the Hermitage Brook, before moving northwards to Nottingham.

Choosing to approach the location on a raised embankment, the railway engineers used a steel-decked span bridge to cross the canal, before using a double-deck, double-width steel-decked span bridge to cross the Midland Railway.

After the decision was made to shut the GCR as part of the Beeching Axe, in the late 1960s contractors were appointed to remove the railway tracks and major parts of the civil engineering infrastructure. This included the section north of Loughborough Central to north of the Midland Main Line. Contractors initially removed the railway tracks, before also removing the bridges and supporting buttresses over the Midland Main Line, and then the embankment to its south. Unfortunately, the following year the Hermitage Brook flooded, resulting in additional contractors being engaged to reimplement part of the railways former embankment.

After the formation of the Great Central as a heritage railway, bridging the resultant "gap" always became a significant challenge to realise the full operational vision. In the mean time, Morley Street industrial estate had been developed on part of the embankments former formation, whilst Loughborough Borough Council had developed, filled with household waste and then covered a landfill to the south. The GCR itself, having started re-implementation of the GCR line from Loughborough Central to the south, had developed its main locomotive shed on the old alignment to the north of the station.

Current features

The Gap is 500 metres (550 yd) long, and approximately 30 metres (33 yd) wide for most of its length, running due north–south approximately 1 kilometre (0.6 mi) north from Loughborough Central. It is bounded: to the west by the northeasternmost part of Loughborough, including the Loughborough Midland station and Morley Street industrial estate; to the east by the covered former household refuse site; and to the north and south by GCR's northern and southern sections respectively.

Current plans for bridging the gap, using a single-track line, include:

Once complete, the project will create a combined 18-mile-long (29 km) heritage railway.

Implementation

After the UK Government's announcement in 2012 that the Midland Main Line would be electrified by 2018, the project timescales to be completed or not were implemented. In 2013, the GCR engaged Network Rail to act as project engineers, project manager and main contractor to complete the project. In June 2013, the GCR and Network Rail signed an agreement to allow bridging of the Midland Main Line, including the underlying operations, maintenance and legal liability agreements for such.

Preliminary works began January 2014 with boreholes being drilled in preparation for the bridge over the Midland Main Line at Loughborough.

In July 2014, the GCR received a one million pound grant from the UK Government’s "Local Growth Deal", via an allocation to the Leicester and Leicestershire Local Enterprise Partnership; the grant will support the GCR’s "Bridging the Gap" project.

Planning application

On 15 April 2014 a planning application was submitted by Great Central Railway PLC with Network Rail acting as agents for "Installation of rail bridge over midland mainline"; which was granted on 27 June 2014. The bridge was envisioned as being single-track and made of two spans and a central supporting pillar in the middle. On 10 February 2015 a non-material minor amendment was applied for in order to allow construction using a single-span bridge design "to remove [the] central pillar"; which was granted by Charnwood Borough Council on 26 March 2015. A two-span design had originally been proposed in order to enable reuse of bridge components removed during the rebuilding of Reading station.

Contracts and legals

Although the GCR owns the track from Loughborough to Leicester North, the underlying land is owned by Charnwood Borough Council, on a 99 year lease signed in 1976. Bridges over or under Network Rail infrastructure must be owned by organisations which can provide suitable legal liability to any incidents which may occur as a result of operations, which means to meet this requirement the owning organisation needs to have a minimum Net present value of over £250M. As the GCR can not clearly meet this criteria, after contract negotiations, it was agreed that Charnwood Borough Council will retain ownership of the land up to the southern abutment of the new bridge, whilst Network Rail will become the owner of the new bridge. The GCR will resultantly negotiate an operational lease agreement with Network Rail, which will define operational requirements which the GCR must comply with over the bridge.

Construction starts

On 12 February 2016, work began to install the new bridge across the Midland main line.