Work on New Street to continue during Christmas break

ENGINEERS working on the redevelopment of Birmingham’s New Street Station are taking advantage of the Christmas break to carry out vital work on the massive project.

While the transport hub is quiet, construction workers will use a huge crane to lift into place a brand new section of bridge, extending the existing Navigation Street footbridge at the west end of the station.

The extension will allow access to platform 12 for the first time and create a new station entrance on Hill Street.

Andrew Skidmore, programme sponsor for Network Rail, said: “This new section of bridge will give passengers more choice and improve access from the station to the south side of the city; however we can’t install it safely with passengers and trains travelling through the station.  

“Birmingham relies on New Street Station to keep it moving so we’re taking advantage of the two-day shutdown of the national rail network to complete this important piece of work.”

To extend the bridge, engineers will use a huge 700 tonne crane which will be erected on Hill Street to safely remove the narrow bridge span which currently serves platforms 10/11.  The crane will then lift the new span of the bridge into place.  

The existing bridge only has one exit onto Navigation Street and only serves platforms 2 to 11 meaning a long walk round for passengers who have a train to catch from platforms 1 or 12.  

The new bridge will provide access to every platform and by creating a second exit onto Hill Street (seen below), will ease congestion and give passengers more options to access the station.

Hill Street will be closed to vehicles and pedestrians on Christmas Day however, the bottom half of Hill Street will reopen on Boxing Day morning to allow shoppers and deliveries to access the Pallasades Shopping Centre.  There will then be a series of night time road closures of Hill Street between December 26 and 28 December, before the road fully reopens on December 29.

To enable the station to remain open for passengers throughout the project, only one platform at a time is closing at New Street for refurbishment.  Platform 1 which had been closed, reopened on December 12, when platform 12 closed for redevelopment.  

Due to the nature of the work in the concourse above, all platforms will be refurbished in several stages and Network Rail said further work on platform 1 would be required before the end of the project.

Train services will operate as normal from Birmingham New Street up until the last train departure on Christmas Eve.  The lifting operation will then start at midnight and will be complete by Boxing Day evening.  

New Street station, along with most of the rest of the rail network, will then reopen to passengers on Monday December 27.  However, there will be a rail replacement service between Redditch and New Street on December 27 and 28, including fast buses from Redditch, as work continues on the Selly Oak bypass.

The extended Navigation Street bridge will open fully for passengers at the completion of phase one of the Gateway project in autumn 2012.  

With New Street station closed, an extensive bus and Metro service will be provided on Boxing Day by regional transport authority Centro.