Grafton Opening End Of Big Rail Project -Then & Now Photos

in General by Jon C — March 29, 2010 at 12:19 am | 0 comments

The Park Rd, Khyber Pass Rd rail development project has been a long complex mission and it’s awesome to see it has made such progress.

As part of the new landscape of Newmarket’s Western Line, huge earthworks were undertaken during December and January to clear the way for a second track between Boston Rd and Kingdon St.

It followed more than a year of intensive activity by contractor Fulton Hogan to rebuild the Park Rd and Khyber Pass rail overbridges and carry out extensive preliminary works to widen the rail corridor.

The final retaining walls are now being completed and Park Rd has completely reopened to traffic.

Khyber Pass Rd followed, with the rail corridor beneath having been widened from 5m to 13m.

The Easter shutdown of the rail network allows KiwiRail to lay the second track - the penultimate phase of the Western Line Duplication - and commission the new signalling before the new Grafton station officially opens on April 9.

There is still quite a bit of clean up at the construction site to be done!

But this is nothing compared to how it has looked over the past months - a selection of the many photos I have taken on the building work over that time is below - work dominated for a long time by huge cranes on the skyline.