Contractors at the Port of Immingham will spend Christmas sliding a 4,000 tonne road bridge into place under a railway line.
More than 100 contractors will work around the clock for 76 hours from 10pm on Christmas Eve to install the bridge at Rosper Road under the railway line, which carries freight trains between the Port of Immingham and Ulceby.
The work is part of an £88m Highways England project to improve road access to the port. Main contractor is Costain. The scheme includes upgrading to dual carriageway a three-mile section of the A160 between the A180 and the port.
The bridge will be slid into position by four hydraulic jacks after 20,000 tonnes of earth have been removed from the existing rail embankment. The team will be working with 40- and 20-tonne excavators, 35-tonne long reach excavators, a bulldozer and eight dump trucks.
Construction of the bridge started in July 2015, and has taken around 100,000 working hours to complete. Highways England will take possession of the site from Network Rail at 10pm on Thursday 24th December for 76 hours to complete the work.
Highways England project manager Ben Ridgeon said: “This is a complex piece of engineering at a strategically important site which is why our contractors will be doing this work over the Christmas period.”
Associated British Ports director Simon Bird said: “Immingham is the UK’s busiest port and currently contributes £460m to the regional economy every year. As such, connectivity is crucial and these improvements will facilitate traffic flow and will have a positive impact on freight movements, which will in turn ensure the future success of the port.”
The Port of Immingham road improvement project began in March 2015 and is due to be completed in autumn 2016.