The ‘Midlands Rail Hub’ project has named the four companies which are its preferred partners for the scheme.

The four preferred partners are VolkerRail, Laing O’Rourke, AtkinsRéalis, Siemens Mobility and Network Rail. They will work together to design and develop plans for the Hub and to support the build phase.

The Midlands Rail Hub project is expected to cost around £1.75bn if delivered in full. Network Rail believes that the new hub will “transform journeys and better connect people with opportunities, jobs, and new houses.”

The Hub was one of the projects which the government’s recent spending review committed to progress. This followed the initial £123m that was released in 2024 for design and development.

The Hub will be created by overhauling the railway in Birmingham and the West Midlands. This will include changing the way that the city’s three main stations – New Street, Moor Street and Snow Hill – are served by train services both within and beyond the region.

The Hub will enable more train services to run on key routes through Birmingham. The biggest change will be the creation of a new connection between the Chiltern main line, which runs into Moor Street, and the Camp Hill lines, which run towards the South West and East Midlands.

The connection will be made via two new chords in Bordesley, close to Birmingham city centre.

The Hub project will also prioritise work to explore how smaller, but vital, pieces of work might be carried out to deliver better services and connections.

These include reopening platform 4 at Snow Hill station, which will allow extra Chiltern Railways services to run directly between Birmingham’s business district and London Marylebone.

They also include redeveloping Kings Norton station and the lines that run through it, to enable additional Cross City trains and new Midlands Rail Hub-enabled services to stop there.

The alliance partners will be planning timescales for the development of the Midlands Rail Hub, and expect early passenger benefits to be realised by the early 2030s.

“Midlands Rail Hub is a brilliant example of the benefits the railway provides to the everyday lives of people, communities and businesses.

It will connect more people with new opportunities, create new jobs and access to careers, and be a catalyst for much-needed house building.

“We are working to deliver early improvements and changes in Kings Norton and at Snow Hill to deliver benefits for passengers and communities as quickly as possible, while planning the bigger pieces of work which will enable much-wider benefits of the project.

“Identifying the preferred alliance partners is a really important step and highlights the commitment and intent to deliver a project of this size and the huge amounts of benefits it will provide to the Midlands and beyond.”

Denise Wetton, Network Rail’s Central route director