Victoria’s Big Build crews have lifted 420 tonnes of beams into place for the new Watsons Road bridge in Diggers Rest.
The 12 Super-T beams, weighing 35 tonnes each, were lifted into place over two days in preparation for a new bridge, which is being built over the rail line to safely separate trains from vehicles and remove the dangerous level crossing.
Two giant cranes weighing up to 500 tonnes positioned the 24-metre-long beams onto concrete piers across the two bridge spans, forming the foundations for the new road deck.
Manufactured in nearby Melton, the giant beams were delivered to site and lifted in last week to coincide with buses replacing trains on the Sunbury Line.
With all the beams now installed, crews will connect the beams to the bridge abutments and piers, ahead of concreting the deck to tie the structure together.
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The 350-metre-long Watsons Road bridge is expected to open to traffic later this year.
Also in Diggers Rest, traffic is now flowing freely over the new Golden Way bridge following the removal of the dangerous and congested Old Calder Highway level crossing earlier this month.
The road bridge opened to traffic mid-June, separating vehicles from trains by connecting Old Calder Highway to Diggers Rest-Coimadai Road over the rail line.
More than 8000 vehicles used the two-level crossings every day, facing delays of up to 36 minutes when 27 trains travel through the crossings during the morning peak.
Diggers Rest – and the Sunbury Line – are projected to be level crossing free in 2025.
In total, the Victorian Government is removing 110 level crossings across Melbourne by 2030 as part of the Level Crossing Removal Project, one of the largest rail infrastructure projects in the state’s history.
The project has made Victorian roads safer by preventing 111 crashes and near misses every year and has slashed travel times in the morning by saving 55 hours of boom gate down time, according to the State Government.
For more information, visit: bigbuild.vic.gov.au/
