£35m project to ramp up rail services

A LONG-AWAITED upgrade allowing freight trains to be taken off the mainline at Padeswood, Flintshire, is set to unlock more frequent rail services between Wrexham and Bidston, Birkenhead.

- ALEC DOYLE Local democracy reporter

For decades there have been calls to increase the number of passenger services along what is now known as the Borderlands Line - connecting north Wales with the Merseyrail network that gives easy access to Liverpool city centre.

Confirmation of the project has come from Ken Skates MS, Cabinet Secretary for Transport and North Wales, in the new North Wales Regional Transport Plan - a strategic document setting out his vision to transform interconnection between communities across the region.

The sidings at Padeswood, which allow the Heidelberg cement works to receive large deliveries of raw materials, have long been too small to fully accommodate the freight trains that arrive there each hour.

Those trains need to be dealt with in stages, with the waiting carriages blocking the line, preventing an increase in passenger services.

This £35m project - funded from the £445m for rail enhancements in Wales confirmed in the Chancellor's summer spending review - has been on the table for some time, with Network Rail appealing to the previous UK Government to support it in January 2024.

Mr Skates has now named the scheme in his transport strategy, bringing hope that the Borderlands Line’s potential may soon be fully unlocked.