Proposed railway electrification in Great Britain

Proposed railway electrification in Great Britain. In July 2012 the UK government announced £4.2 billion of new electrification schemes, all at 25 kV AC. These will be Northern Hub, Great Western Main Line, South Wales Main Line, Midland Main Line, Electric Spine, Crossrail, Gospel Oak to Barking Line and West Midlands suburban lines.

As part of the Northern Hub project, the following lines in North West England and Yorkshire are to be electrified:

New cross-London main line due to open 2018.

Extensions to the existing West Midlands suburban electrification:

Although this electrification scheme and associated works has come to mean Edinburgh -Glasgow via Falkirk High due to be complete by December 2016, the rolling programme will then follow with the route via Shotts. The scheme via Carstairs in association with the ECML electrification was completed in the early 1990s. With other infills in the central belt of Scotland there will soon be 4 different electrified routes between the two cities with assorted diversionary routes. The December 2016 date was not met and in May 2017 a further delay to the wires going live was announced due to a safety critical component possibly for the whole route needing to be replaced.

On 25 June 2015 the government announced that some of the electrification projects would be delayed or cut back because of rising costs. Electrification work was to be "paused" on the Trans-Pennine route between York and Manchester and on the Midland main line between Bedford and Sheffield. Electrification of the Great Western main line would go ahead but the status of the Reading-Newbury and Didcot-Oxford sections was unclear.

However, in September 2015, the electrification work was "un-paused", but with a delayed completion date. Since then there have been regular updates including one published in October 2016.

On 8 November 2016, Transport Minister Paul Maynard announced that several parts of the Great Western electrification project were being deferred 'until further notice': these include the line between Didcot and Oxford, Henley and Marlow branch lines, the routes to Bristol Temple Meads, and the line west of Cardiff.

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