CIVILS, CONSTRUCTION & STATIONS
As RTM was being printed, the final rib of Manchester Victoria’s grand new roof was due to be lifted into place. We caught up with project manager Jed Hulme of Severfield, the Bolton-based company that is one of the biggest structural steel businesses in Europe, just after the ninth and biggest of the 15 ribs had been installed – a major milestone in the £44m redevelopment of Manchester Victoria.
was a successful lift,” Jed Hulme tells us. “We’d been preparing for this lift for six or seven weeks, and we were all geared up and ready to go.”
“It
Hulme is project manager for steel company Severfield, which has been installing the ribs to support the stunning £16m new roof at Manchester Victoria. The ribs have been installed during short 3.5-hour overnight possessions, because the OLE used for the Manchester Metrolink light rail system has to be isolated.
When RTM talked to Hulme, every rib had been installed within that possession window with no late handbacks. “There was no reason for us to think this one, Rib 9, would be any different – but we were primed because it was the biggest rib of the 15.”
The ribs (each 1.2m deep and 500mm wide) are far too big to be delivered in one piece – Rib 9, for example, was delivered in five pieces, each an average of 20m long and weighing 20 tonnes. The rib sections were transported from Severfield’s Bolton factory into Manchester city centre by Eddie Stobart and JB Rawcliffe & Sons Ltd, before being manoeuvred onto the site through a 4m wide gate.
Hulme said: “We bring them to site in separate modules, and we build what we call a level jig, level with the floor on site, high enough off the floor so the guys can get underneath to weld the ribs.”
Welding and the ‘toast rack’
Sections A and B were welded together, then C, D and E, to form two ‘units’.
The roof
Work has also now begun to install the roof’s 21,500 sq m of ETFE (ethylene tetrafluoroethylene) panels: a lighter, cheaper, self-cleaning alternative to glass, as used at Manchester Piccadilly and Birmingham New Street stations and the Eden Project in Cornwall. Vector Foiltec is the contractor for those works.
The whole project is due for completion in early 2015. The main contractor is Morgan Sindall, with BDP Architects. Hyder Consulting are the structural engineers.
Ian Joslin, area director for Network Rail, said: “The new concourse will be lighter, brighter and more modern than the old one and will complement the original station building’s beautifully restored architecture. When it opens next year, Manchester Victoria will be a station of which the city can be proud of.”
28 | rail technology magazine Aug/Sep 14
Hulme explained: “Once those were welded, and everything’s been tested and painted, we then lifted each section up into what we call the ‘toast rack’, which is a pre-formed jig structure that stands at the side of the flat jigs.”
Each unit is lifted into position, to form the rib as it will eventually be in situ, then the two units are welded together to form the final rib.
This was all done in the 10 days before the possession, followed by blasting, priming and painting of the rib connections to make it ready for the final lift.
That occurred on the morning of 3 August, using a 750-tonne LR 1750 crawler crane. The team had previously been using a 1,200-tonne LTM 11200 telescopic crane from Mammoets, the UK’s largest.
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