Bridge slides into place over Nottingham Railway Station

The first section of the iconic bridge that will be carrying trams over Nottingham Railway Station by the end of next year has started to be slid into place as a significant milestone in Phase Two of Nottingham Express Transit has been reached.  The movement of the first half of the bridge – which has been built on four temporary towers in a compound on
Crocus Street – will take eleven consecutive nights to be put into its final resting place with work starting on Monday 11th February.

The Karlsruhe Friendship Bridge will be 104 metres long, 14.5 metres wide and weighs 1100 tonnes and has had to be built in two sections because of its sheer size. Up to 30 people are needed to move the first section of the bridge from Crocus Street 50 metres over Queens Road towards the railway station. This involves slowly sliding the bridge in 2.6 metre cycles between 2000 and 0600 on eleven consecutive nights using hydraulic jacks. It is expected that it will move up to 13 metres a night.

Once this section of the bridge is moved there will be room in the Crocus Street compound for the second half to be constructed. Once this is completed the two sections will be joined together and pushed over the station later this year. In early 2014 work will take place to lay a concrete base on the bridge and lay the tram tracks and build the new tram stop. The Station bridge will connect with two other new structures which will be positioned over Station Street and Queens Road – these three new bridges replicate the bridges which once stood in the same locations and carried the Great Central Railway.

Cllr Jane Urquhart, Portfolio Holder for Planning and Transport at Nottingham City Council, commented: “It’s wonderful to see such a feat of engineering take place. When complete, the three connecting bridges at Nottingham Station will become an iconic landmark for the city, and transform how people interchange between tram, train and
other public and private forms of transport. Local people and businesses are already benefiting from employment opportunities on both tram and station projects, with almost 600 people working locally to construct the tram extension and to transform the Railway Station.”