COATINGS


T Work has finished on painting Scotland’s biggest listed ‘building’, one of the largest


coating projects to ever be completed in the rail industry. Kate Ashley reports.


he £130m refurbishment of the Forth bridge is now complete after 10 years of


work. The project finished on 9 December 2011 – ahead of schedule – and the bridge is free of scaffolding for the first time in a decade.


The work included painting over 230,000 square metres of the 125-year-old structure and means that no additional full-scale re- painting will be needed for at least 20 years.


Network Rail delivered the project with Balfour Beatty, who undertook the restora- tion works with four principal sub contrac- tors – Pyeroy Ltd, specialists in blasting and coating; Harsco Infrastructure, specialists in access systems and encapsulation; RBG Ltd, specialists in steel repairs; and facilita- tors ThyssenKrupp Palmers Ltd.


Old paint was removed using an abrasive blasting preparation and the steel coated with an industrial protective coating sys- tem. The new paint used to coat the bridge is specialist glass flake epoxy paint, similar to that used in the offshore oil industry and designed to last 25 years. It is, how- ever, expected to last much longer. A triple layer of this paint was applied to protect the bridge’s steel work from the weather. W J Leigh of Bolton supplied the specialist paint and coating systems.


70 | rail technology magazine Dec/Jan 12


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