One of the bridge installations carried this month included this Warren truss in Shere Heath in Surrey. Designed and manufactured for Balfour Beatty Rail in conjunction with Network Rail’s engineering team, the remote location of the bridge provided us all with a few challenges.
The paint system applied to the structures is the latest Fluoropolymer product which provides significant benefits for the structure’s future maintenance requirements. Typically, over the 120 year design life of a bridge, you would expect 5 Major Maintenance interventions – with this new system, you only need 1 or potentially 2 interventions. This has a substantial cost benefit when comparing the different bridge designs available.
For access reasons, the bridge was lifted onto a rail trailer using a mobile crane and then moved nearly 2 miles along the tracks. To fit under an existing bridge along this route, the truss depth was designed accordingly with a few inches of clearance to spare. A rail Kirov crane was used to lift the span into its final position.
Significant planning and collaborative working with all involved parties ensured the project was completed successfully and within an extremely tight construction programme.
