Giant bridge building machine finishes work on Mersey Gateway

Trinity, one of the Mersey Gateway’s two giant bridge building machines, has finished work in Widnes, and will now be taken apart over the course of two months.

The bright orange movable scaffolding system, set up on the north bank of the River Mersey, cast the final central span of the elevated north approach viaduct this week.

The machine, essentially a giant concrete mould, has constructed 11 road deck spans, creating one seamless structure that sits on top of the supporting bridge piers that stretch across the saltmarsh.

Approximately 14,200 cubed metres of concrete have been used during construction of the central road deck section, measuring a total length of around 715 metres.

Mersey Gateway Trinity Concrete Pour

Gareth Stuart, Merseylink’s project director, said: “This is another great achievement for the project. We now have the central section of the road deck complete and expect the entire north approach viaduct to be finished within the next couple of months. This key piece of road infrastructure is one of two elevated approach viaducts that will connect the new bridge to the main road networks in Widnes and Runcorn improving links between the two towns and the wider region.”

The approach viaduct decks are constructed in three phases. Once the central spans have been constructed by Trinity, a deck slab is built on top of the span, and finally the outer deck or ‘wings’ are built by a wing traveller machine to provide the full six-lane width of the approach road.

Trinity was specially made for the Mersey Gateway bridge. While most machines of this kind can only build bridge spans of up to 60 metres, Trinity was designed to be able to cast spans of up to 70 metres, making it the longest of its kind in Europe.

With its work now done, Trinity will be dismantled, reused and recycled.

It will take construction teams around two months to take the machine apart as they contend with approximately 1,200 components, 3,000 actual parts, and over 60,000 bolts.

Work continues on the north approach viaduct as the wing traveller machine constructs the outer deck to form the outside road lanes of the structure. The machine has built more than three quarters of the outer deck so far, with construction of the viaduct anticipated to finish around the end of March.

The Mersey Gateway bridge is on schedule to open in autumn 2017.

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Along with Liverpool 2 in the northern end of our city region this project will boost Liverpool’s connectivity into the 21st century. An iconic engineering achievement, connecting the city region to the south and boosting business and jobs in key employment sectors.

By Altmouth

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