BETWEEN mid-July and mid-August, engineers in the West Midlands moved three new bridges into place and demolished one old structure to accommodate the alignment of HS2.
In what is believed to be the UK’s heaviest single-span bridge drive, a 56 metre-long (184 feet) and 19 metres-wide (62 feet) concrete structure weighing 6200 tonnes was positioned underneath theWest Coast Main Line at FulfenWood (at the southern end of the 1.5 mile/2.5km Streethay Cutting) near Lichfield on July 17.
The bridge, constructed alongside the railway over a period of six months, was put into place using a remotecontrolled, self-propelled modular transporter with four carrier beams and a total of 840 wheels.
To create the cutting for HS2, 61,000 cubic metres of earth was removed. A further 15,000 cubic metres of excavation took place to create space for the new bridge to be moved into. The work took place during a nine-day closure of theWCML between Stafford and Rugby.