MORE than 24,000 members of Network Rail’s orange army have headed home for a belated Christmas after an intensive, but successful 10 days of railway improvement work.

The teams worked more than 600,000 hours over the Christmas shut-down in a bid to improve reliability and reduced congestion following the £100m invested over the last 10 days on the rail network.

The work was completed at the quietest time for rail travel on the country’s railway with around half the normal number of passengers travelling compared to the 4.5 million who typically use the network daily.

From engineers and track layers to project managers and scaffolders, the teams battled freezing conditions over the Christmas period to deliver 200 projects across Britain – the biggest programme of works over the festive period in Network Rail’s history.

Among the Christmas upgrade work, significant progress was made on preparations for the new Crossrail route across London which is due to open in 2018, benefiting passengers from the West heading into Central London.

Janice Crawford, regional director for major projects in the south, worked her first Christmas having joined Network Rail 10 months ago.

She said: “This was my first Christmas at Network Rail and I was hugely impressed with the work that I saw being carried out, some of which was extremely complex.

"Knowing that most of the nation were spending Christmas with their loved ones made the teams commitment all the more inspiring.

"I was fortunate to be able get home for Christmas dinner with my family including my grandson but our workers didn’t. They carried on with their tasks to ensure that the railway would be back up and working for passengers as quickly as possible.

"I take my hat off to each and every one of them.”