Bridge Beam

Well, today was day 1 of installing the recently fabricated bridge beams.

It all went relatively smoothly. However, the weather did prove a bit rough, with tomorrow’s being even worse! However, we don’t have any high-risk fire activities to do, so we’ll still be working.

It’s a little hard to tell, but the steel beam in the foreground is the new beam. The one behind it is just our lifting beam.

The new beams are in a slightly different position to the old ones, being exactly under the rail – typically, they’re quite some distance from the rail, although in this bridge they do vary greatly.

Before we packed up today, we did actually place the outer timber back in. However, no pics of that unfortunately.

The aim is to get the other beam installed tomorrow, and possibly get all the bracing etc… all fastened up, we’ll see how we go, the weather might beat us.

Nominally the old beams were 18″ thick, however these ones certainly weren’t (only around 16″), so we will have some packing to do to get a nice even hump in the bridge where these new beams (460mm thick) will be, nothing we can’t handle but it might look a little odd for a while.

Meeting at Maldon 8am or on site from 8.30am.