In a four-hour operation, Sarens removed two old bridge segments, making room for a new bridge on O’Riordan Street in Sydney, Australia.
As part of the Botany Rail Duplication Project, Sarens was asked by our client John Holland to demolish two old rail bridges at O’Riordan Street.
The $400 million Port Botany Rail Line Duplication and Cabramatta Loop project will deliver better access to global export markets via Port Botany, improve freight supply chains across New South Wales, and help ease local road congestion.
Sarens had to remove two bridges – the east span weighing 258T and the west span weighing 284T.
There were two major challenges:
- The fixed steel billboard on the sides of the bridges.
- A four-hour time window to remove the old bridges and drive approximately 1 km over public roads, next to the Sydney airport, to bring them to the designated lay down yard.
The weight of the bridges, more than 250tonnes each, and the surrounding structures ruled out the possibility of deploying a crane. SPMTs proved to be the ideal solution.
The Eastern bridge was removed by lowering the bridge down using the stroke of the SPMT. To remove the west span an additional stroke was required. The team decided to deploy CS250 climbing system on top of the SPMTs for the west span. Upon removal, the SPMTs drove the bridges down to a lay down yard, around 1km away. Upon arrival Sarens gantry system was used to lift bridge sections from the SPMTs onto concrete blocks.The removal & drive down to the lay down yard was completed in under four hours. (While the lowering could be done outside the critical window)
Michiel De Bodt, Technical Solutions Sales Manager adds, “The proximity of the project site to the Sydney Domestic and International Airport added to our challenge. We had to follow strict OLS restrictions and most of the work was completed during the night shifts.” He says, “It was a challenging project but with the close cooperation of all the parties our team successfully completed the project on time and within the budget.”
