DRS braves the Beast from the East
As the UK faced extreme weather conditions, Direct Rail Services joined Network Rail to help keep the nation moving by clearing snow from train lines.
The Nuclear Decommissioning Authority’s specialist rail freight subsidiary was kept extremely busy keeping its locomotives running in the atrocious weather conditions that swept the nation at the start of March.
DRS’ Commercial Director, Beverley Stothart, said:
Providing support to Network Rail in keeping the UK’s train services running is already an important part of our work, but when we face such a severe spell of weather, that threatens to disrupt the UK’s infrastructure, it’s even more important that we get DRS services out to help keep the lines open so the train services that we rely on can get back to normal.
The DRS loco’s were deployed in support of Network Rail’s efforts to return the rail network to normal, patrolling important routes to keep them open and driving snow ploughs to battle through the many drifts that ‘The Beast from the East’ brought with it.
The severe snow and record-breaking low temperatures resulted in massive disruption to the rail network and train services all over the UK, in particular across Scotland.
Large parts of the busy rail network were unavailable for train services and, without clearing snow from the network, it would have been impossible for normal rail services to restart on key routes.
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Published 2 March 2018Last updated 12 March 2018 + show all updates
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