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Ordsall Chord arches lifted into place

22 Feb 17 Britain’s first asymmetrical network arch railway bridge has been installed in Manchester.

Weldex supplied the lifting muscle
Weldex supplied the lifting muscle

The two Ordsall Chord arches were lifted into place over the River Irwell in central Manchester on Tuesday 21st February 2017. Lifting specialist Weldex deployed two of its largest crawler cranes in tandem for the 600-tonne lift, including a Liebherr LR 11350.

A joint venture of Skanska and BAM is main contractor for the £85m project, which will help ease a rail bottleneck to the south of Manchester Piccadilly station and enable faster, more frequent services to run across the north of England.

The steelwork was fabricated by Severfield, which managed the installation process.

The 89-metre single-span ‘network arch’ bridge is the second-longest of its type in the world. It was designed by BDP with engineers from WSP, Aecom and Mott Macdonald with a low curve in a tennis racket-style lattice. Unlike any other in Britain its design is asymmetrical.

See also Digger Blogger's report at the-digger-blog/view/tandem-hoist-for-ordsall-chord

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MPU
MPU

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