STATION MODERNISATION & EQUIPMENT
The station over
With all the major civil engineering work now done, the team behind the complex Blackfriars rebuild can give themselves a huge pat on the back. The project’s leaders, including Network Rail’s project manager for Blackfriars Rob Lines, and Balfour Beatty Civil Engineering project director Chris Evans, briefed RTM on the challenges they’ve faced to get this far.
ost civils and stations projects on the railways involve working in restricted spaces and dealing with logistical challenges.
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But few recent projects can match the Blackfriars upgrade for that sort of complexity, with work being done over the River Thames, over and next to live Tube and national rail lines, and busy roads.
But three years later, as Rob Lines, Network Rail’s project manager for Blackfriars, puts it: “It’s starting to look like the artist’s impressions – it’s really quite magnificent.”
The key parts of the upgrade have been the overhaul of the Underground station, platform widening and extensions to allow frequent
service on the Wimbledon/Sutton loop and for passengers from East Croydon. The station is also now ready to accommodate the full 12-car, 24 train-per-hour Thameslink services from 2018.
FCC’s Roger Perkins said: “Blackfriars is back on the Tube map: that’s made a big, big difference to our customers, and will shorten their journeys. It makes Blackfriars a more attractive proposition as a station to use, and what people are slowly waking up to is the fact we have this new south station. Along with Network Rail, we have started to really push this.
“Commuters love it; immediately, it’s 10 minutes knocked off their walking time to work, if they work south of the river. It’s also really perfect for Bankside: for Shakespeare’s Globe, and, further down the river, the South Bank attractions.”
He said 75,000 passengers used the new southern station entrance in March, double the December 2011 figure. He added: “I’m not sure if we realised it was going to be as popular as it is.”
Thameslink 12-car running and higher
passenger flows, a new station entrance on the south bank of the Thames, and major changes to track alignment, including shifting the through lines from the west side of the bridge to the east.
It has been a 24/7 worksite since early 2009, but now the ‘Thameslink baton’ is being passed over to the London Bridge team – hardly a small project itself, of course.
Passenger benefits
First Capital Connect, which has waited patiently as the work was being done, while dealing with the disruption as it affected passengers, drivers and staff, is thrilled with the results, now that the track is available again at nights and weekends. FCC can run eight-car trains at weekends, increase service frequencies, and offer a better weekend
68 | rail technology magazine Jun/Jul 12 Looking back
Reflecting on some of the major civil engineering challenges along the way, Chris Evans, project director for Balfour Beatty, spoke first about the need to isolate the live Underground lines at Blackfriars,
the Circle and
District lines, from the construction site.
This involved a solid steel, 350-tonne Track
Protection Structure (TPS),
which “effectively put the Underground tracks in a tunnel”, as Evans put it. The structure had to be put in place in 39 separate sections in April 2009, with each part slid along steel beams, because of the small size of the access available from above. Evans said: “It was a ‘steel shield’ completely hiding
the railway from us, while we demolished the station.”
Most of the old station was demolished during summer 2009, while the subway connecting platforms 4 and 5 was replaced by a temporary footbridge.
Thames
In December 2009, during a major Christmas- time track possession, the team undertook the so-called ‘bridge slide’, when the existing bridge was dismantled, removed and replaced with a new prefabricated structure that was slid into place in three days. Everything possible was done before the possession to ensure it went smoothly, with meticulous planning, as the team had only one shot to ensure it was a success – and all the subsequent works depended on it.
Evans said: “With the bridge slide, there was a massive sequence of events that all had to happen concurrently to allow the overall programme to move ahead.
Below: The track switch - before and after
THE
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