Sydney Harbour Bridge
RKR Engineering and Rhomberg Rail Australia on the "Sydney Harbour Bridge Railway Deck Upgrade" project.
Opened in 1932, the Sydney Harbour Bridge consists of ten lanes, two of which are for rail and eight for road traffic. Sydney Trains runs around 500 trains across the bridge every weekday, and despite the Sydney Harbour Tunnel, around 161,000 cars still cross the structure known as the “coat hanger” every day. An extensive modernisation programme is to now extend the service life of the rail corridor by a further 120 years.
As part of this project, RKR Engineering provided skilled workers and machines for the replacement and renovation of the steel structure. The company also replaced the existing wooden beams and the roof with a continuous concrete slab roof. This work demonstrated RKR Engineering’s unique expertise in the fields of bridges and support structures. Rhomberg Rail Australia and its teams supported the construction and renewal of the tracks.
The complex engineering required for this project included removing the existing railway infrastructure, dismantling the wooden deck, and installing 266 concrete slabs made on site. The composite concrete floor, which replaced the aging 555-metre-long wooden floor on the north and south approaches, reduces maintenance requirements as it is more robust and uses more durable materials.
Andrew Constance, NSW Minister for Transport and Roads, praised the efforts of the teams who completed the work during a ten day long closure. “I would like to thank the more than 420 workers who worked around the clock during heavy rain to complete the largest modernisation of the bridge in its history,” he praised.
