Network Rail is ramping up spending on protecting the railway following a landslip in the Bicester area. 

The incident occurred on the Chiltern Main Line near Bicester North on Thursday, January 11.

The line towards the Midlands was blocked and services between Oxford and London Marylebone were unable to run.

It caused lots of disruption to railway passengers in Bicester as services in the area were cancelled. 

Now Network Rail will invest around £2.8 billion over the next five years concerning the issues of climate change and extreme weather to help prevent similar landslips from occurring. 

This money will fund measures including making embarkments more resilient and recruiting nearly 400 additional drainage engineers.

It will also fund the training of hundreds of operational staff to better interpret weather forecasts and help install CCTV at sites with a high risk of flooding.

Oxford Mail: There was a landslip in the Bicester area in January There was a landslip in the Bicester area in January (Image: Chiltern Railways/X)Network Rail chief executive Andrew Haines said: “Climate change is the biggest challenge our railway faces.

“The extreme weather of the past year, that has seen an unprecedented 14 named storms, has taken its toll on our railway with experts predicting more of the same to come.

“We are responding to that challenge with a huge investment in making our railway more resilient and better performing for rail users during such events.

“We can never completely weatherproof our railway, but we can be better prepared and mitigate the worst that Mother Nature throws at us, now and into the future, to keep passengers and services safe and moving.”

Other recent landslips include the West Coast Main Line between Coventry and Rugby in February and in Telford, Shropshire last month.

This spending is part of Network Rail’s £45.4 billion investment plan for the five years from Monday, April 1.

It will spend £19.3 billion on replacing old assets with new ones as well as investing in other capital expenditure projects such as digital signalling.

Mr Haines added: “Train performance has been suffering and the industry must come together and make this, and tackling climate change, our main focus.

“Our role is to deliver a safe railway that people can rely on, whatever the weather, with trains that turn up and arrive at their destination on time, and where passengers have confidence they are in safe hands.

“This is what we must deliver daily and what we should, and will, be held to account for.”

Rail minister Huw Merriman said: “Our railways are at the heart of many people’s daily lives and getting us to where we need to be.

“That’s why the network must be fit for the future, with the resilience to handle extreme weather while offering the reliability and level of service our passengers deserve.

“I am confident the plan set out by Network Rail today will help keep our railways on track for the coming years.”