A 112m long, 1,631 tonne HS2 bridge is ready to be moved into place in central Birmingham, using ‘first time’ techniques
The Lawley Middleway bridge will be part of a one-mile stretch over five connected viaducts on Birmingham’s ring road.
Balfour Beatty VINCI (BBV), alongside bridge move contactor, Mammoet, is preparing to place the steel structure this August.
The bridge has been constructed offsite for the last two years, next to Digbeth Canal, to minimise disruption to traffic.
A rare combination of techniques will be used to move the bridge
The bridge is ready to be jacked up onto a pair of self-propelled modular transporters (SPMTs), which will rotate the bridge by 90 degrees on 15 August. Then, from 16-23 August, a skidding system utilising a jacking push/pull mechanism will help the SPMTs move the bridge into place.
This technique is a first for BBV on HS2.
To further avoid traffic disruption as much as possible, these operations will take place at night (10 pm to 6 am), moving the bridge by roughly 12 metres every night. During these hours, the section of Lawley Middleway between Garrison Circus to Curzon Circus will be closed from 15-25 August.
HS2’s head of delivery for the Curzon approaches, Greg Sugden, said: “The team have worked hard to get us ready for yet another significant feat of engineering, marking a further step forward in the construction of the high-speed railway into Birmingham.
“The Curzon Approaches is a complex and challenging section, with the railway being carefully designed and constructed through an urban landscape and network of roads, railways and canals.”
Big milestones for HS2
At the end of June, HS2 announced that the excavation phase of the Northolt Tunnel in London had been completed.
The tunnel is 35m below ground, and is the second-longest tunnel in the whole route at 8.4 miles in length.
The tunnel was dug at a rate of roughly 38 metres per day, using four tunnel-boring machines simultaneously placing concrete segments as they progressed. The concrete segments weigh 7 tonnes each.
4,160,000 tonnes of clay were excavated and removed to be used elsewhere on the British rail network. 14,300 concrete tunnel rings were made, using 94,233 segments.
At the time of announcement, Alan Morris, construction delivery director for HS2 Ltd, said: “Completing the excavation of this 8.4-mile-long tunnel on HS2 is a real achievement and one the team should be immensely proud of.
“We’re building HS2 for the future, to increase capacity on our rail network and improve journeys for millions of rail users.
“The construction of HS2 is already bringing benefits, with £20bn economic benefit already being delivered at either end of the line.”
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