Our history

We first entered the railway industry in 1946 as Eagre construction. After five years of successful business we merged with a civils contractor to become Grant Lyon & Co Ltd. Grant Lyon & Co Ltd worked hard over the next twenty years and expanded as an international railway contractor. We then moved into the British steel market as an S&C manufacturer in 1989. Our biggest move came in September 1996 when GrantRail was formed; evolving from a previous British-Dutch alliance that had worked successfully on track renewals for London Underground.

VolkerRail

In November 2008 GrantRail fell under full ownership of VolkerWessels and in March 2009 we were rebranded as VolkerRail. This provided VolkerWessels with a more prominent brand in the UK market place.

We currently sit under our parent company, VolkerWessels UK, a multi-disciplinary civil engineering, construction and rail group. All of the UK companies, VolkerFitzpatrick, VolkerRail, VolkerStevin, VolkerHighways, VolkerLaser and VolkerInfra, have a long and successful heritage, each founded by entrepreneurs. They have gone on to achieve a long history of success through hard work, innovation and excellence.

The group is the UK arm of Dutch based VolkerWessels, one of the largest construction groups in Europe. With a turnover in excess of €4.5 billion, VolkerWessels is one of Holland’s largest construction companies and has 16,600 employees in 125 operating companies and offices in the Netherlands, Belgium, the United Kingdom, Canada and the United States. VolkerWessels has extensive experience in rail infrastructure construction, renewal and maintenance.

Over the last 15 years we have become a highly successful infrastructure contractor; we have undertaken work on the UK’s national rail network and MOD, expanded into the urban mass transit schemes including metro and underground programmes, and worked with most of the UK’s light rail and tram operators.