Tag: civil engineering

#365daysofbiking The Crossing:

December 13th – A bright, glass hard, cold day saw me in Telford mid-morning, and in the week or two I haven’t been here, the new footbridge has opened.

Man, is it a curate’s egg.

First thing is, someone clearly booked the possessions and plant to remove the old bridge for a fixed date, and the new one had to open. Regardless. So it’s not in even a nearly finished state. Brick cladding is still being laid. The access ramp to the cycleway on the Priorslee side is still being built. Bits of it haven’t been surfaced properly or at all. Workmen still mingle with commuters. It’s a bloody mess if I’m honest.

The bridge itself is an interesting, open construction that’s light and airy. It makes the journey between platforms one hell of a lot shorter. The lifts are welcome. It feels stable and the thing seems to be a nice, rigid design.

But there’s a huge, massive, glaring issue.

There is no ramp access to the Shrewsbury side of the station. So wheelies and those not able to use steps are confined to the lift. If that isn’t working, someone alighting here from Brum or Wolves will be stranded on a platform next to a 6 lane road with no means to cross it. There is no simple way around.

I can’t overstate how bad this is if it’s the final design.

If the bridge does not eventually provide ramp access to the Shrewsbury platform, then it will have failed in its primary objective – to make life easier for those that found the old ramp too steep. The designers will have spent 10 million quid making the use of this station for those with limited mobility much more of a gamble.

I hope I’m wrong and a ramp is sorted. If not, the council and Network Rail really need to rethink this urgently.

The bridge is nice, but too reliant on lifts, and at the moment is very much unfinished. Open too soon, and at the moment, looking critically flawed.

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#365daysofbiking An impressive span:

September 17th – At Telford, a major step in the contstruction of the new station footbridge has been taken – the deck of the main span over the ring road adjacent has been lifted into place. It’s huge.

I watched it grow from a skeletal form on the central reservation of the road system, to see it glazed clad and wired, and now it spans the roadway in parallel with the facility it is to replace.

As a design, I’m ambivalent, but it will be a much nicer, convenient thing to use. But there’s a long, long way to go yet.

At least it provided the morning commuters with an interesting spectacle.

#365daysofbiking The Crane life:

September 12th: My first trip to Telford in several weeks and the new station footbridge is making steady progress. The ring road is now closed under the bridge, and. a large crane is being assembled, presumably to lift the massive main deck into place from it’s construction point on an adjacent verge.

A queue of HGVs and machines lines up down the empty roadway. People discuss, Marshall and prepare. This is clearly to be one heck of an operation.

The rest of the project progresses: Brickwork is going up, lift machinery is taking form in the assembled bridge piers and lots of ancillary pathways and steelwork are moving into place or emerging.

This is going to be one to watch.

August 13th – A brighter day when the morning got going and I found myself visiting Telford feeling better, even if my stomach was still uncomfortable.

The footbridge project is progressing well but there still seems to be an awful lot to do: No discernible structural assembly of the lifts yet, and the access point on the west side seems miles off completion yet, although in the way these things generally do, it’ll probably come together very quickly in the end.

Interesting to note the main span mainly constructed now, and it’ll be lifted in one piece onto the piers. I’d be interested to see if that ripples the roof skin.

At the station end – which this construction is already dwarfing – there are to large, green service cabinets in position by the steps. Perhaps it’s me, but they look really, really incongruous.

This gets more and more fascinating every time I visit.

July 26th – At Telford, the new footbridge at the station continues to take shape. Steel is being erected, steps and glazing are being added and lifts seem to be going in too. 

There are now five distinct building sites that make up this construction. Getting to the right one to start work – across a railway, a major dual carriageway and slip roads – can’t be much fun!

July 3rd – I had stuff to do in Telford mid-morning, and was eager to see how the footbridge project was progressing. I wasn’t disappointed.

On site, the assembled over-railway portion of the deck had been lifted into place as I suspected onto the lattice piers – which despite my scepticism last week appear to have been positioned without breaking any glass at all. Remarkable.

The crane used to lift the 96 tonne structure into place was being dismantled on site – by another crane. It was terribly meta. 

It was heaven for a machine geek like me, I was transfixed for some time.

It’s nice to see the new footbridge taking shape at last.

June 25th – Over in Telford on Monday morning, sun streamed down on construction workers and engineers preparing for the following week when a huge crane will lift the first, over-railway section of the new bridge into place from where it’s being assembled right next to the westbound platform.

Last week I couldn’t work out how they were going to lift it into place with nothing to put it on – then today I realised that as well as the deck, the piers had been assembled out of their final position too – the two lattice and glass pillar towers beyond the green crane will be bolted onto the matching concrete bases each side of the railway, and the new deck bolted to it, spanning the tracks.

What I can’t work out is why they’ve fitted the glazing before they finally lift the towers – surely moving them will fleet the structure so much the glass will break?

Perhaps it’s tougher than I think… we shall see, I guess…

June 19th – Back in Telford briefly, I noted that the footbridge project is progressing apace, with both new spans being brought to sigh and assembled on the ground before being lifted onto the piers.

This is clearly a complex structure and one whose support arrangements will be very complex indeed. I notice thanks to old pal of the blog Alan Dawson that the shorter, over-railway section will be lifted into place at the end of June – but I’m unclear what it’ll be supported upon, as yet there’s not steelwork present at either side of the station to place it on.

One assumes it’ll all fall into place quickly.

You can read about the lifting project here.

May 10th – Passing on a flying visit to Telford, the new footbridge project is progressing really, really well.

Beside the westbound platform, all the piling and excavations are finished now, and construction of the bridge section to go over the railway continues, while the footings and steelwork for the pier and access ways are beginning to show the final outline now.

Next to the eastbound platform, a forest of steel girders are being piled into the ground for the pier that side.

This really is a most fascinating project.

May 8th – Without my camera which I stupidly left behind, grotty phone photos of a bait of embankment bolstering by the Canal and River Trust in Aldridge at Stubbers Green between the factory units on Brickyard Road that back on to the canal, and Lathams bridge.

There may well be an issue there, as there was in Walsall Wood a few years ago when the embankment on the same side was built up around the Black Cock and Coppice Road areas.

I wonder in they’re settling still or if this is just a safety margin thing?