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Friday 10 May 2019

Queen Street window clean is a top glass job

Region & Route:

Scotland’s Railway: Scotland

Network Rail has completed cleaning the fan-shaped, south gable of the glass roof at Glasgow’s Queen Street station.

Over three nights, specialist cleaning contractors used cherry pickers to clean over 700 panes of glass, with the team carefully working between the trusses and steel-work that make up the gable.

Brushes were used to loosen the dirt and grime on each pane, which was then pressure washed to rinse off the residue, with over 4,000 litres of water required in total.

The roof was last cleaned five years ago ahead of Glasgow hosting the 2014 Commonwealth Games. Since then, specialist contractor SCS, has also cleaned the 48,000 panes that make up the station roof at Glasgow Central and the 29,000 at Waverley in Edinburgh.

Glasgow Queen Street station opened in 1842, with the Victorian glass roof constructed three decades later. Now a Category A listed structure, the roof was completed in 1878.

Joe Mulvenna, project manager for Glasgow Queen Street station redevelopment, said: “With part of the new concourse area now installed within the station, we had an opportunity to access the gable to carry out a preliminary clean of the glass fan.

“Ahead of the completion of the redevelopment in March 2020, we will again clean the south gable glass - both inside and out.”

Work ongoing at the station includes the installation of buffer end stops within the concourse. Following the completion of the buffers, engineers will next month begin to uncover a space beneath the concourse in front of platforms two and three that was originally excavated during the 2016 Queen Street tunnel works closure.

Re-covered with a temporary concourse while other elements of the station redevelopment were being delivered, this previously-excavated area will form the basis of the 23 metre extension to platforms two and three which will support the new electric trains now running on routes across the central belt.

Once completed in 2020, Glasgow Queen Street station will not only provide extended platforms for longer trains of up to eight carriages, but an expanded concourse with more circulation space in a contemporary and distinctive building.