The benefits of a safe blockade
GRAEME PICKERING gains an insight into a nine-day engineering project to replace 19 sets of worn-out points above the River Tyne
As the first week of 2018 drew to a close, a team began work on an £ 8.6 million Network Rail scheme at the southern end of Newcastle Central station.
The scheme’s success depended upon the efforts of around 180 people a day, working in shifts around the clock over a total of nine days to replace 19 sets of points. The points, or switches and crossings as they’re more technically known, dated back to the 1980s and had failed 15 times between January and October last year.
To complete the work, engineers had to overcome the challenges of weight and gaugerestricted rail access to a site which not only lacked space, it was also difficult for them to even reach. For the duration of the work, it also meant complete closure of the station’s southern approach over the King Edward VII Bridge and its four south-facing bay platforms.
Taking place on the East Coast Main Line (ECML) at the North East’s busiest station, the project’s impact upon services was significant. Network Rail estimates that it required the biggest temporary change to passenger and freight services on the ECML since the remodelling of York station in 1989.
During the work at Newcastle, CrossCountry services from Reading and Southampton Central terminated at Durham and most TransPennine Express trains ran no further north than York. Northern used the MetroCentre station on the western edge of Gateshead as a temporary terminus for Tyne Valley Line services, with a bus connection to and from Central station.
Trains that continued to serve Newcastle Central were routed via the High Level Bridge, with Virgin Trains East Coast and CrossCountry allowing an extra ten to 15 minutes on top of usual journey times to take account of trains having to arrive and depart from the northern end of the station.
Network Rail Project Manager Rachel Cox says the nine-day occupation was the most effective way to tackle something this extensive: “I think all the train operators were anxious for us to do this work. So, in agreeing a nine-day blockade with them, I think they realised it’s probably of more benefit to them to do it that way, and for us to go in there as a one hit, do it all, and get back out again.
“We get as much done as we can within that blockade. Normally, we’ll have a 12-week programme of follow-up works, and blockades allow us to do some of the follow-up works to a standard where we don’t need to come back and do that again - it’s safer because we’re reducing the amount of times we have to go out there. That has to be the better way to work, rather than trying to do it in between trains. It supports the engineering that we do while we’re there, and it’s less disruptive to the passenger.”
The line at this location dates back to 1906, when the King Edward Bridge and southern approach to the station first opened. Its civil engineering features meant Cox and her colleagues had to overcome clearance and weight restrictions, just to get the new switches and crossings to the site.
“It’s been quite a challenge getting the panels in. Normally they would come in with tilting wagons, but that’s not possible because of the viaduct and the bridge restrictions, so all the panels that have been pre-built have been made smaller so that we could bring them in by road.”
The solution was to agree the use of land belonging to the nearby Metro Radio Arena, adjacent to the Paradise Branch (which until 1982 was part of the main route for Tyne Valley Line services into Newcastle), giving direct access to Central station. A total of 88 panels, made to around half the usual length, were transported to Newcastle by lorry with just a three-day window between arrival of the final loads and the deadline to hand back the site to the Arena (to allow preparation for its forthcoming events).
After being loaded onto wagons on the branch, the panels were taken first of all to the south-facing bay Platforms 9 to 12 (which were part of the engineering occupation), before being moved to the work site.
Cox explains: “It’s a bit of a long-winded job, but one that’s been very well thought out and planned by the planning team and the construction team for all of the logistics.”
She says that, again, special measures were necessary because of a lack of level access for the workforce from surrounding roads: “We’ve had to have a large scaffold staircase built to get us up to the side of the track, which takes us right onto our job.” This was installed before Christmas.
On site, restricted working space also required lighting and generators to be smaller than standard equipment. Lights were also attached by magnet to the works trains, to improve visibility for the teams.
And in another move bespoke to the project, straps were attached and anchored on the isolated stretch of overhead line where the work was taking place, to prevent track and ballast relaying from disrupting the tension on the live section still being used in the station.
Cox and her team were delighted with the progress of the switch and crossing replacement. Working more than a hundred feet above the River Tyne, at an exposed location, they had to deal with wind and rain. But with de-icer on hand to aid the operation of laying new ballast, even the colder mornings didn’t present too much of a problem. It was all completed comfortably within schedule to allow services to resume on time.
The engineering presence doesn’t stop there, however. Cox says checks are still required to see how the new panels are holding up under the weight of trains, with adjustments where needed such as adding more ballast under track joints.
“We’ll have a series of follow-up works on the Saturday evenings which are all non- disruptive to the trains. We normally use void meters, and we have patrollers out there as well looking at that piece of track and inspecting it. It [the void meter] measures whether the ballast consolidation underneath is not such that it’s giving and the track’s dipping when the train goes over. If they were, we’d go in and manually pack underneath those joints to keep the train from dipping over the joints.
“We’ve succeeded because of the amount of planning and reviews, and everything that we’ve put into it all the way through from design, development, construction and project management. We don’t just think about what’s going on within our work site, we’re actually thinking outside of that in terms of all of the customers, and working with people on the station to get the hoarding up.
“We’ve tried to think of everything outside of just what happens as an engineering work site, and also the welfare of the guys with the food van and travelling. We’ve really tried to go to town on all of that. To me, it all drives towards having a safe railway and working safely.”