11 August (Part 2) - Hurricane Bertha impedes Crossrail
My
excuses for missing most of the weekend’s Crossrail activities are
detailed below, except that my knees were so weak and aching by Saturday I don’t think my legs could have
carried me as far as Abbey Wood station which is how I came to miss seeing the
installation of the station footbridge.
Further up the line work was proceeding on the new track but at Church Manorway
things were not going well. The enormous new footbridge was delivered by lorry
as I watched but although it was attached to the crane and the slack taken up it
was judged to be too windy to risk raising it. With its solid sides it would
provide far more wind loading than the open framework of the Abbey Wood bridge.
The available viewpoints for the Church Manorway bridge installation (below) were severely restricted.
If the bridge wasn’t put in place during the night, one very long trailer is
going to be out of commission for a few weeks!
The final photograph shows the piling required before the track can be laid. A construction worker told me that under the weight of
concrete alone the piles sunk four metres into the ground and a further six metres before they reached solid ground.