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Monday 15 Jan 2018

Queen Street demolition works start on a high

Region & Route:

Scotland’s Railway: Scotland

Engineers have craned three specialist machines onto the roof of Consort House as they begin the main structural demolition work to make space for the new Glasgow Queen Street station.

Over the coming months, the light-weight excavators, which were craned over 80m into the air to reach the roof, will break up the building’s reinforced concrete and steel frame floor-by-floor.

The protective scaffold already erected around Consort House will limit any dust and noise pollution escaping into the surrounding city.

Consort House and the adjoining Millennium Hotel extension need to be removed to make way for the new station frontage, concourse and entrances and new longer platforms being delivered as part of the station’s redevelopment.

Contractor Balfour Beatty is carrying out the work to demolish the existing buildings and engineers have been working to prepare the structures for removal since last spring – disconnecting power supplies and other services and stripping out the interiors.

When complete, the redevelopment project will give passengers an expanded concourse with increased capacity and circulation space, improved customer facilities and a contemporary and distinctive building both internally and externally.

Rodger Querns, Network Rail programme director, said: “We are using a unique method to demolish these redundant structures in a way that will limit the impact of our work on both passengers and nearby properties.

“The removal of Consort House and the hotel extension will create the space we need to transform Glasgow Queen Street, constructing a new landmark building for the city and delivering much improved facilities for passengers.”