The deck segments are being made on site at a purpose-built outdoor factory at Kingsbury, Warwickshire. The 55,000 square metre site employs around 1,000 people in total, with a team of 200 tasked with building the network of nine viaducts at Water Orton and Coleshill, crossing motorways, roads and footpaths.
It also hosts a Skills Academy to support local people into employment or further training.
The pre-cast yard will turn out as many as eight segments a day using the match-casting technique whereby each segment is cast up against its neighbour to ensure that they fit together perfectly on site. Working to a tolerance of plus or minus 5mm this process results in a seamless viaduct deck when installed.
The segments are all 3.5 metres high and weigh between 50 and 80 tonnes each. They are either 7 metres or 11 metres wide depending on whether they carry single or double-track sections of the railway.
A 54-metre-long gantry crane stacks the completed segments in the yard ready for their onward journey to nearby Water Orton and Coleshill ready for on-site assembly.
HS2’s Delta Junction forms two spurs which branch off the main HS2 line between London and the north. Trains will travel between the Birmingham Curzon Street station terminus and destinations north, and between Curzon Street and the south, accounting for around 10 kilometres of track.
The project is being delivered by HS2’s main works contractor for the West Midlands, Balfour Beatty Vinci (BBV) which is building 90 kilometres of high-speed line between Long Itchington in Warwickshire to the centre of Birmingham and on to Staffordshire.
HS2 senior project manager for Delta Junction, Panos Psathas said:
“We’re pleased to see this next milestone on the Midlands section of HS2, as the first segments come off the production line, ready for the BBV team to start building the viaducts next year.
BBV project manager Pascal Albertelli added: “Watching the first segments roll off the production line recently at our pre-cast yard in Kingsbury was a really proud moment for me and my team, who’ve worked tirelessly over the past two years to get us to this point.
“It’s a fascinating phase of the project to be involved in, because of the sheer scale and the innovative production methods we’ve introduced here. It’s incredible to think that this open-air factory will help to build HS2’s Delta Junction, located just a few miles down the road.”
The first segments made at Kingsbury will be used to build the 500-metre River Tame West viaduct near Water Orton. This viaduct crosses the River Tame valley and joins the Watton House embankment to the Faraday embankment for trains travelling from London to the north. BBV started construction of the substructures supporting the viaduct deck earlier this year. deck construction will start towards the end of 2023.
Watch footage of the Warwickshire factory in production
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