Bigger Picture

Rail-borne concrete.

TARMAC’S precast concrete factory at

Tallington, near Stamford in Lincolnshire, is in the middle of delivering a contract to cast almost 40,000 concrete segments for the Thames Tideway Tunnel.

The segments will be delivered to the capital by rail via the adjacent East Coast Main Line, before being bolted together to form 6,000 rings that comprise the eastern section of the £ 4.2 billion ‘super sewer’.

Due to open in 2025, the 16-mile-long tunnel will connect 34 combined sewer overflows that currently discharge into the River Thames and deliver sewage to the Abbey Mills Pumping Station and Beckton Sewage Treatment Works in London.

Opened by Dow-Mac in 1943, the Tallington site has the distinction of being the first in the world to make concrete sleepers.

Subsequently passed into the ownership of Costain and then Tarmac, the factory has produced a range of other precast concrete railway products including bridge beams, crossing bearers and tunnel linings.

WETHERALL. DARREN LNER 801222 races north past Tarmac’s precast concrete factory at Tallington on October 20, forming the 1300 London King’s Cross-Edinburgh Waverley.