Built in 1877 and forming the main support for the north side of the roof of the A listed Queen Street Station, Cathedral Street Bridge has been closed to traffic since 2001. A major £6m joint venture refurbishment by Network Rail and Glasgow City Council was commissioned to strengthen the bridge in time for it to be reopened for the 2012 Commonwealth Games. Although there had been previous repair programmes carried out to localised areas over the years, nothing had been done on the same scale as the new programme of works.
The refurbishment programme involved shot-blasting and removing the paint from the underside of the bridge. This would allow our engineers to survey and dimension any defects and identify the areas that required strengthening or replacement. With these areas identified, our design team liaised with the main contractor to agree on the required solution to the defects. When the solution had been approved, our workshop fabricated the necessary components and had them NDT tested, shot-blasted and painted to network Rail specification before delivering them to our site installation team. The installation of the new strengthening brackets would be carried out using the existing hole pattern on the bridge structure. To minimise weakening the bridge any further, a one out one in policy was adopted when removing any old rivets and replacing with tension controlled bolts.
As planned, the bridge was reopened to the public in time for the 2012 Commonwealth Games.
