page_title: North Wales Coast Line
section_title: Future
hierarchical_section_title: North Wales Coast Line / Future
caption_attribution_description: English: North Wales Coast Line between Chester and Saltney
context_page_description: The North Wales Coast Line, also known as the North Wales Main Line, is a major railway line in the north of Wales, running from Crewe on the West Coast Main Line to Holyhead on the Isle of Anglesey.
  The line is not currently electrified, so Avanti West Coast, the current operator of the West Coast Partnership franchise, currently uses Class 221 Super Voyagers, which they have done since December 2007, on routes to Holyhead.
  The line contains several notable engineering structures, namely Conwy railway bridge across the River Conwy, and Britannia Bridge across the Menai Strait.
context_section_description: The Welsh Government would like the line to be electrified, especially if Crewe becomes a rail hub due to HS2 in 2026. Chancellor George Osborne said in July 2015 that there was a "really strong case" for electrification of the line. The Electrification Task Force said that the Chester to Crewe line was a Tier 2 priority for being electrified in the CP6 period (2019-2024).  A £50 million signalling upgrade programme is currently being carried out between Shotton and Colwyn Bay, which will see modular colour lights supervised from the South Wales Rail Operating Centre in Cardiff replace the manual signal boxes and mixture of semaphore and older colour lights currently in use, in March 2018.
caption: North Wales Coast Line between Chester and Saltney, showing the two tracks over the River Dee. The path of the other two tracks which were removed can also be seen.
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