NE; Aberdeen to Central belt, is it still underway for completion in 2030-2035?

[drs66424]

Having spoken/seeing current OHLE & Bridge upgrades, there was a rumour the NE Project (Aberdeen - Dundee - Dunblane - Edinburgh) had been called off. Change in management.

But, the bridge upgrades are still on-going. Much recent, Craigo Road Bridge, being raised for clearance. Couple northwards beyond Laurencekirk have had cable and reinforced bridge parapets installed.
The embankment monitoring equipment. Surprisingly, the semaphore signals are still functional. No OHLE concrete bases, no LED signals as such…..

Almost leans to, the project has been flopped, but not……

What is the plan?

 

[waverley47]

Short answer, nobody knows.

Long answer.

The project isn't necessarily an actual project, it's more of an end point, and steps towards that are taking place. The project has a lot of money being spent on it, as evidenced by the bridge rebuildings and the massive amount of capital expenditure on grid feeders. As long as these continue to plod along, then no, the project isn't cancelled, but as it's not an actual project, that's all that will happen for the time being.

At some point, someone is going to start stringing up knitting, and at that point we'll have a concrete answer as to whether or not the wires will happen.

Until then, there's not really any information available to the public to say either way. Internally, I'm hearing it's not cancelled, but they're confident that they have an extra couple of years to get there, so wires won't be going up until the Dalmeny wires and stuff at the bottom end of the Borders Line have is done first.