VIDEO: Timelapse captures milestone of electrification work to improve rail journeys in South Wales: Bridge Street Bridge removal

Friday 15 Jul 2016

VIDEO: Timelapse captures milestone of electrification work to improve rail journeys in South Wales

Region & Route:
| Wales & Western: Wales & Borders
| Wales & Western

A milestone in the work to upgrade a Newport city centre bridge in preparation for the new fleet of electric trains was completed last weekend as part of Network Rail’s Railway Upgrade Plan to deliver a bigger, better railway for passengers.

Timelapse footage captured the assembly of a 600 tonne crawler crane which was used to lift and remove the main deck of the existing Bridge Street Road Bridge in the early hours of Sunday morning (10 July). Network Rail engineers worked to reduce the weight of the bridge deck from 600 tonnes to approximately 235 tonnes so that it could be lifted out in one go.

The bridge lift was a critical milestone in the project to replace the old structure, all part of the preparation work to electrify the South Wales Mainline, a major part of Network Rail’s Railway Upgrade Plan which will deliver faster, greener, quieter and more reliable train services for passengers.

Karl Gilmore, programme manager for Network Rail said: “Electrifying the railway will provide the growing number of train passengers with faster, greener, quieter, more reliable services and will help to stimulate economic growth by better connecting towns and cities in South Wales and beyond. We would like to thank the public for bearing with us while this essential work is completed.”

The new bridge deck will be installed in September and the road bridge is expected to reopen in December.

 

Contact information

Passengers / community members
Network Rail national helpline
03457 11 41 41

Latest travel advice
Please visit National Rail Enquiries

Journalists
Network Rail press office - Nichole Sarra
Senior Communications Manager (Wales)
Network Rail
07730362397
Nichole.Sarra@networkrail.co.uk

About Network Rail

We own, operate and develop Britain's railway infrastructure; that's 20,000 miles of track, 30,000 bridges, tunnels and viaducts and the thousands of signals, level crossings and stations. We run 20 of the UK's largest stations while all the others, over 2,500, are run by the country's train operating companies.

Usually, there are almost five million journeys made in the UK and over 600 freight trains run on the network. People depend on Britain's railway for their daily commute, to visit friends and loved ones and to get them home safe every day. Our role is to deliver a safe and reliable railway, so we carefully manage and deliver thousands of projects every year that form part of the multi-billion pound Railway Upgrade Plan, to grow and expand the nation's railway network to respond to the tremendous growth and demand the railway has experienced - a doubling of passenger journeys over the past 20 years.

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