There was a big change in thinking a few years ago, that continual stagework should be done away with, in place of big shutdowns. Cant remember who it was probably at the start of NR?
The BR way was to have teams allocated to relaying and signal installation testing and so on. They did that work all the time and everyone knew each other, and would be on site for months at a time. The new items often put in out of use pending changeover, or the new points connected and brought into use week by week. That's how the Railways achieved all the big modernisation schemes in the past. The big advantage over nowadays is that Ballast trains would automatically be manned continuously and if the job slipped, the staff on site would make decisions to "cut short" the work and catch up on another week. We all worked for the same firm (BR) and there were no contractual problems between teams. If it was the obvious thing to do it would be done, no-one had any reason not to. On the Morning after NO-one would blame you for doing the best to get the job going. That's not to say there would not be some awkward questions as to what went wrong. Its a different approach today and the cost has ballooned out of all recognition.
