Shropshire Star

Opening of Cosford station is delayed

The reopening of Cosford's new £2.2million railway station will be delayed until next month after contractors discovered lumps of concrete buried under the site.

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The reopening of Cosford's new £2.2million railway station will be delayed until next month after contractors discovered lumps of concrete buried under the site.

The station was due to reopen next week, but contractors have been slowed down after discovering the concrete in the embankments where they were trying to place the steel pile foundations for the new platform.

Keith Lumley, from Network Rail, said: "We're seeing a complete lack of station at the moment. The old station has been removed and we've gone back to the embankment.

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"We hit a slight snag when we started to put in the 6m long steel piles which will support the platform. There were large lumps of concrete in the embankment which we started to hit when we started to screw in the steel piles, so we had to stop and dig them out.

"That delayed us a bit, but we have nearly completed putting the piles in now. Once the work is finished there will be a new station, waiting shelter, platform with no slots in it, and it will last for another 100 or so years.

"We would like to get the station open for the Easter bank holiday weekend, but even if we don't manage that then we will certainly be done by April 16."

The station has been closed since October for the multimillion pound project to replace the old station and platform, which were made almost entirely of wood.

Dave Cooper, project manager for primary contractor C Spencer Ltd, said: "A lot of people might go past during the day and think we're not actually doing much, but we are limited in the time we can work.

"The machinery we're using to put in the steel piles runs on the track, so we can only work at night for about four hours while the scheduled trains aren't working."

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