{"id":335670,"date":"2025-08-11T12:10:13","date_gmt":"2025-08-11T12:10:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/335670\/"},"modified":"2025-08-11T12:10:13","modified_gmt":"2025-08-11T12:10:13","slug":"112m-long-hs2-bridge-ready-to-be-positioned-in-birmingham","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/335670\/","title":{"rendered":"112m-long HS2 bridge ready to be positioned in Birmingham"},"content":{"rendered":"

A 112m long, 1,631 tonne HS2 bridge is ready to be moved into place in central Birmingham, using \u2018first time\u2019 techniques<\/p>\n

The Lawley Middleway bridge will be part of a one-mile stretch over five connected viaducts on Birmingham\u2019s ring road.<\/p>\n

Balfour Beatty VINCI (BBV), alongside bridge move contactor, Mammoet, is preparing to place the steel structure this August.<\/p>\n

The bridge has been constructed offsite for the last two years, next to Digbeth Canal, to minimise disruption to traffic.<\/p>\n

A rare combination of techniques will be used to move the bridge<\/p>\n

The bridge is ready to be jacked up onto a pair of self-propelled modular transporters (SPMTs), which will rotate the bridge by 90 degrees on 15 August. Then, from 16-23 August, a skidding system utilising a jacking push\/pull mechanism will help the SPMTs move the bridge into place.<\/p>\n

This technique is a first for BBV on HS2<\/a>.<\/p>\n

To further avoid traffic disruption as much as possible, these operations will take place at night (10 pm to 6 am), moving the bridge by roughly 12 metres every night. During these hours, the section of Lawley Middleway between Garrison Circus to Curzon Circus will be closed from 15-25 August.<\/p>\n

HS2\u2019s head of delivery for the Curzon approaches, Greg Sugden, said: \u201cThe team have worked hard to get us ready for yet another significant feat of engineering, marking a further step forward in the construction of the high-speed railway into Birmingham.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe Curzon Approaches is a complex and challenging section, with the railway being carefully designed and constructed through an urban landscape and network of roads, railways and canals.\u201d<\/p>\n

Big milestones for HS2<\/p>\n

At the end of June, HS2 announced that the excavation phase of the Northolt Tunnel<\/a> in London had been completed.<\/p>\n

The tunnel is 35m below ground, and is the second-longest tunnel in the whole route at 8.4 miles in length.<\/p>\n

The tunnel was dug at a rate of roughly 38 metres per day, using four tunnel-boring machines simultaneously placing concrete segments as they progressed. The concrete segments weigh 7 tonnes each.<\/p>\n

4,160,000 tonnes of clay were excavated and removed to be used elsewhere on the British rail network. 14,300 concrete tunnel rings were made, using 94,233 segments.<\/p>\n

At the time of announcement, Alan Morris, construction delivery director for HS2 Ltd, said: \u201cCompleting the excavation of this 8.4-mile-long tunnel on HS2 is a real achievement and one the team should be immensely proud of.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re building HS2 for the future, to increase capacity on our rail network and improve journeys for millions of rail users.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe construction of HS2 is already bringing benefits, with \u00a320bn economic benefit already being delivered at either end of the line.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A 112m long, 1,631 tonne HS2 bridge is ready to be moved into place in central Birmingham, using…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":335671,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7820],"tags":[855,748,393,4884,29350,66574,120136,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-335670","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-birmingham","8":"tag-birmingham","9":"tag-britain","10":"tag-england","11":"tag-great-britain","12":"tag-hs2","13":"tag-modern-methods-of-construction","14":"tag-offsite-construction","15":"tag-uk","16":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/115010065162334787","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/335670","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=335670"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/335670\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/335671"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=335670"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=335670"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=335670"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}