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It’s exciting to see early signs of the next stage of the Auckland rail electrification project starting to appear.
Workers were very excited late yesterday to be finishing off this new baby born at Kingsland train station:
The infrastructure component of the project will cost $500m and involves new signalling, the traction (overhead masts, wire & power systems) and the work to provide clearances (bridge raising and track lowering) for the overhead wires.
The $90m signalling contract was won by Invensys Rail with their first job at Newmarket for the new station.
Because of the Rugby World Cup 2011, the new signalling will be in place then for the key routes to Eden Park - Westfield to Britomart and Newmarket to Morningside.
The $80m contract for the traction was won by a consortium of Hawkins Infrastructure and Laing O’Rourke and that consortium has begun the job of building foundations for the masts.
Contracts for the successful supplier of the new EMUs (Electric Multiple Units) will be finalised mid next year. The short list was later extended to include several Chinese manufacturers that had not been named initially leading to speculation there was political capital in awarding the job to China in the wake of trade overtures to that country.
The timetable is for the infrastructure and the first units to be operating in 2013.
All lines between Swanson and Papakura are being electrified.
Graph: KiwiRail
2 Comments
I see some of the new masts are now stored at the Penrose Station, between the Main Line and the Onehunga Line.They are being masde by a company in Penrose You can see their storage yard from the Southern Line between Penrose and Westfield on the left heading South.
I remember reading somewhere that the signal masts have a neat design that allows them to be folded over to bring the lights down to working level. It means that staff don’t need ladders to work on them which reduces OSH issues and makes it harder for taggers to get up them.