Fens Railway
Rail freight departing the ports of Harwich and Felixstowe will soon be making its way North in a far more efficient manner thanks to HBPW.
Currently such freight has to travel round London before making its way North West. However, C Spencer – HBPW’s client – has been charged with upgrading a railway line which passes through Ely in Cambridgeshire, so that it will be able to carry freight trains up to 750 metres long.
Once complete the line, currently single track, will be transformed into a dual line and, thanks to its extra weight capacity, will avoid the need for freight trains bound for the North West to travel around London.
HBPW Managing Director, Paul Withers, said: “Our work on designing part of the scheme – we are responsible for the section from Ely Dock Junction to Stutney Cutting in Cambridgeshire – began towards the end of last year.
“As so often in the case, the project is a technical challenge because the upgraded line crosses the Fens, some of the boggiest land in the country. If you consider that the existing embankments, which were built some 150 years ago, are still moving a century and a half on, then you get a measure of the challenge.”