A 67-year-old railway bridge carrying a roundabout over the West Coast Main Line in Stockport has been successfully removed in the first week of its major £20m replacement.
Network Rail is ten days into a 21-day railway closure for the huge civil engineering project to transform transport in the town.
Around 100 engineers per day are working around the clock to rebuild the Greek Street bridge.
One week into the highly anticipated project, 200 old concrete beams have been cut out and removed from the site by Network Rail’s contractor, Murphy.
Lifted by two huge cranes, with a combined capacity of 1300 tonnes, the redundant bridge beams were carefully placed to the ground and taken off site by a fleet of 67 heavy goods vehicles (HGVs).
With a 60m cavernous gap where the old bridge used to be, the team can now prepare to install the new bridge this week.
The new bridge structure is made up of 51 parts* which will be moved into their final position by the two crawler cranes, which have a maximum hoisting height of 196m.
