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HAIL THE RAIL REVOLUTION

NETWORK RAIL has embarked on a £35 billion, five-year "rail revolution" programme involving more than 500 separate schemes to provide extra capacity and faster services across the entire UK rail network.

Network Rail chief executive Iain Coucher said: "Britain is on the brink of a rail revolution. Network Rail is ready to unleash the biggest expansion of Britain's railways since the age of Brunel.

"The next five years will see massive investment in improving the railways for passengers and freight users. We will see a transformed railway that will deliver more seats, and longer and faster trains."

Of the £35 billion spend, almost £12 billion will go towards relieving overcrowding by lengthening platforms and increasing capacity to enable more trains to run. Coucher said: "Stations will be transformed and new ones built. Speeds will be increased. Bottlenecks will be unblocked. Thousands of new trains will debut, services will run more frequently, and all this while time-keeping is ramped up, costs driven down and safety boosted. "The last five years has been about putting right the ills. This has been achieved with train punctuality, passenger satisfaction and railway safety. The next five years will be focused on doing the basics even better and delivering a bigger, better railway," he said.