Network Rail has completed a major £33m project to reinforce land alongside the East Coast Main Line in County Durham.

The project is at Browney Curve, approximately 3 miles south of Durham, and was necessary to secure this vital transport link for the future.

Significant carbon savings were achieved by using innovative engineering approaches to help solve historical problems at the site.

Browney Curve is an area prone to landslips and has been monitored for many years. Instead of waiting for a landslip to occur, which would have disrupted services, engineers took a proactive approach to securing the site.

Work began in September 2023 to stabilise a section of the East Coast Main Line that runs alongside the River Browney in County Durham.

When It was built nearly 200 years ago, the stability of the ground presented significant challenges to the engineers of the time.

Those challenges have now finally been resolved by using modern engineering solutions, and fittingly comes as Britain’s railways celebrate their 200th anniversary.

To stabilise the ground and prevent potential landslips, engineers installed more than 500 piles across 400 metres of land and completed the work without disrupting any passenger services.

To reduce the environmental impact of the work, engineers adopted several innovative approaches, which saved nearly 9,000 tonnes of CO2 by using second-hand steel stock, over 600 tonnes of CO2 by sourcing materials from local suppliers, and another 600 tonnes of CO2 by adopting technical innovations in designing the piles.

The work is not quite finished, as later this year trees will be planted along the river to provide natural protection against future erosion.

It isn’t only the national railway network that has problems with landslips, as in January a serious landslip closed part of the Severn Valley Railway in Shropshire, at a location where the railway had not had any previous problems.

“This has been one of the largest geotechnical projects in the country, combining modern sustainable engineering solutions with our rich railway heritage. The East Coast Main Line has been serving communities for almost 200 years, and this work ensures it will continue to do so reliably and safely. What makes this project particularly special is how we’ve used cutting-edge technology to solve a centuries-old challenge of managing land stability around railway infrastructure, while significantly reducing our carbon footprint.”

Tom Grainger, lead portfolio manager for Network Rail