Hook landslip: Rail disruption ends as line reopens after repairs

Network Rail said fixing the landslip was "an incredibly tough and complicated job"

Repairs to a railway line damaged by a landslip have been completed.

The 144ft-long (44m) landslip, which happened near Hook in Hampshire, damaged the main line from London Waterloo to Basingstoke in January.

Passengers have faced disruption for more than a month, with most recently no trains between Farnborough and Basingstoke after 22:00 GMT since 13 February while repairs continued.

The work was completed overnight and the line reopened earlier.

On 15 January, a section of railway embankment collapsed after heavy rain, with a stretch of track suspended in mid-air and only one of the four tracks available.

During a final visit to the repair site, Mark Killick, Network Rail's Wessex route director, said it was "an incredibly tough and complicated job" but the approach taken was "the least disruptive overall".

"I'm so sorry our customers will have to endure more disruption before we can reopen all four lines," he added.

Analysis

By Paul Clifton, BBC South transport correspondent

The landslip all but severed one of the busiest railway lines in the country. For a week, barely any services could get through.

Network Rail found an ingenious and unusual solution: cut off one of the two London-bound lines, and slew a Basingstoke-bound track into its place.

It created a little landslip bypass so trains could run in both directions while reconstruction continued alongside.

Five weeks on, the tracks have been moved back into their normal position. In railway terms, it has been done quickly, this is heavy-duty engineering.

But questions remain. This landslip happened right beside one that occurred only four years ago and on exactly the same spot as a big collapse in 1960.

Given this Victorian clay embankment is a well-known high-risk site, could better monitoring and preventive maintenance have stopped the landslip happening at all?