CIVIL ENGINEERING AND CONSTRUCTION


While most of the country was glued to the screen watching the Royal Wedding, Network Rail and Skanska engineers were installing a 1,200-tonne bridge over London’s Borough High Street.


J


ust 51 hours after works started on the complex project to install a new


railway bridge over Borough High Street, traffi c was fl owing again along the road below.


The 72m long bridge had to be lowered into place over the Royal Wedding bank holiday weekend with incredible precision on top of the new viaduct, travelling an average of 7mm per second – all within the cramped surroundings of the Borough Market and London Bridge area.


The bridge makes up part of the 507m-long Borough viaduct above the market area. Calling the engineering project “a challenge” is an understatement – parts of the viaduct are only 16cm away from the surrounding buildings. But in a city with its fair share of rail bottlenecks, London Bridge is one of the “most stifl ing”, Network Rail said, hence the need for such a radical solution.


Martin Jurkowski, Network Rail’s project director leading the wider London Bridge redevelopment, said: “The new Borough viaduct will double the number of tracks coming out of the western end of London Bridge station, unlocking a major bottleneck and allowing us to provide two dedicated tracks for Thameslink services. It is a hugely important milestone in our plans to deliver modern stations, more


58 | rail technology magazine Apr/May 11


trains and better journeys to and through the heart of London.”


The viaduct project had encountered massive amounts of protest in


years, with more than 60,000 signatures


London Bridge’s 86 trains per hour from 2018: • 28 Charing Cross; • 18 Thameslink; • 20 Cannon Street;


• 20 London Bridge Low Level;


• The other 6 Thameslink services, which make up the 24 trains per hour run via Elephant & Castle, through the core of London from Blackfriars to St Pancras


recent


against it on one petition to ‘save Borough Market’ – the petition’s creators said at the time: “Construction of a new viaduct will destroy the whole present character of this neighbourhood. The scheme will be a disaster for residents and visitors, bad for businesses and the fi lm industry.”


But Network Rail always maintained that was based on a misunderstanding of the project and while ultimately, there did have to be some relocation, Borough Market still very much exists. Network Rail created a new market space for traders


All images © Network Rail


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