Wednesday, February 20, 2008
NORTH DULWICH BRIDGE
NORTH DULWICH BRIDGE
A NOVELLA BY MIKE COLVIN,
CHAPTER 2
Hi everyone
You may recall that on the original plan both North Dulwich station and the adjacent road bridge were to be well and truly closed (no trains, no crossing of the bridge, not even pedestrians) on 3 weekends: 13-14jan08, 23-24 feb08, 13-14apr08.
As you know, they missed the first weekend completely since they had neglected to get planning permission in time, and now that work on the bridge has started I keep looking by from time to time to see how they are doing, and wondering whether it looked like they were going to meet this all important second closure weekend.
Frankly, for the last few weeks activity on the Red Post Hill bridge site has been pretty minimal. The number of major items of plant well outnumbered the number of staff, and in true British workman style if you were lucky enough to find one actually working then there were another three advising or simply watching. When I queried the guys on site about the lack of action it was attributed to the managers of the various utilities (MOVU), whose services run over the bridge, who seemingly could not make up their mind about the essential rerouting of the services involved. Naively I imagined that because of the expense involved, that you did not move heavy plant in until you knew what you were going to do, and how you are going to do it. Clearly that is considered to be an old fashioned idea by modern "managers" J.
Earlier this week it became evident that effort was being cranked up: more equipment had appeared along with generators, site offices and latrine blocks on the banks of the railway cutting alongside Half Moon Lane. A substantial mini bridge had been built out of scaffolding on the Half Moon Lane side of the road bridge to take the diverted services in chunky, flexible ducting which was then being put in place. Even so it looked like a lot of work still needed to be done and I queried whether enough would be done in time for the closure to go ahead this weekend as planned.
Now I don't really believe that it was my innocent enquiry that has caused activity to more than double in the last two days, but more than double it has. It was positively swarming with orange coated ants in white hard hats this morning, and quite a few of them (maybe even as many as half of them) were actually doing something. OK, taping screening to the railings to spare us the embarrassment of seeing "hairy bummed workers" (his words) using the latrines may not seem like a major contribution to the all important task of replacing the existing bridge structure, but apparently it is all necessary preparatory work J. So is diverting the services, but progress on that so far is pretty minimal. Lots of old ducting pipes have been exposed but not a single one has yet been diverted.
Sadly the flexible ducting put in place on Monday has now been removed, apparently to be replaced by something more substantial at the request of MOVU, and so the orange ants are now busily building an even more substantial gantry on the station side of the bridge. Whilst I believe that they probably now have enough staff on site to get that done in time, there seems to me to be a high risk that MOVU may well strike again J . Frankly, it is all far too last minute for me to feel anything other than whoever is running this project, is flying it by the seat of his pants.
Anyway the guys on site seem convinced that the close down will indeed take place this weekend and the major works (removing the bridge structure) will take place. Heavy cranes are due to move in on Friday evening and my guess is that from then on it will be continuous 24 hour working. They seem to think it will attract a lot of spectators, and if they have a crane on the Half Moon Lane side of the bridge, then that whole junction is going to be pretty congested, which may possibly impact on the P4 bus service.
Subscribe to Posts [Atom]