Port River bridge at Ethelton is also being replaced during the shutdown.

It seems odd that the Port River bridge is undergoing further work considering that it was completely resleepered and track relaid in October 2015.  The list of additional work during the T2T closure includes Maintenance of the Port River Bridge (see http://www.adelaidemetro.com.au/Announcements/Planned-Disruptions/Full-Outer-Harbor-and-Grange-rail-line-closure).  The rail maintenance calendar (http://www.infrastructure.sa.gov.au/RR/rail_revitalisation/rail_maintenance_calendar) details the work as "Replacement of existing steel bridge spans".  Presumably the condition of the bridge structure was only determined during the 2015 work.

Does the expenditure on the bridge in 2015 and again next month mean that heavy rail will survive to Outer Harbor and will not be replaced by light rail?

Alex C

You'd hope so, considering that they are also building a new bridge over South Road and the underpass at Torrens Junction which will become redundant if it later gets diverted onto the Port Road tram line.

I think the PortLink concept will get ditched soon, because the public overwhelmingly hates it and it will come to be used by the Liberals as a stick to beat the ALP in the shadow campaign before the 2018 election starts properly. This government is ridiculously out of touch with the public, but they do listen to their many media advisors.

South Road project going ahead in leaps and bounds during the Xmas break - Grange Rd and Port Rd bridges are currently being lowered into position and next week the Outer Harbour line will be closed until Australia Day in order to get the rail overpass done. I did see a massive crane on the road this weekend and I guess that's where it was headed?

There has been a massive crane on the site for a while now while they construct the actual bridge spans on the Western side ot T2T project near the railway line on the Southern side. It was there a fortnight ago being used to assemble the bridge spans by the look of. They might have just moved it the short distance to do these spans for the road works though! If it was huge and blue that would be it then!

Port River bridge at Ethelton is also being replaced during the shutdown.

It seems odd that the Port River bridge is undergoing further work considering that it was completely resleepered and track relaid in October 2015.  The list of additional work during the T2T closure includes Maintenance of the Port River Bridge (see http://www.adelaidemetro.com.au/Announcements/Planned-Disruptions/Full-Outer-Harbor-and-Grange-rail-line-closure).  The rail maintenance calendar (http://www.infrastructure.sa.gov.au/RR/rail_revitalisation/rail_maintenance_calendar) details the work as "Replacement of existing steel bridge spans".  Presumably the condition of the bridge structure was only determined during the 2015 work.

Does the expenditure on the bridge in 2015 and again next month mean that heavy rail will survive to Outer Harbor and will not be replaced by light rail?

Alex C

I think that you will find that the Port River bridge was in worse shape than at first though so while they had the bridge for that shutdown in 2015 a thorough examination and testing was done on it and they found things that they did not know before hand. I assume that this bridge will be replaced with concrete decks like the Viaduct was to enable the track across it to be ballasted and use normal concrete sleeper's that cannot be used at the moment. They were just waiting for a window of opportunity to do it though, so they did a quick bit of a fix up just to make sure it was safe and when the line is completely shut they will do both hopefully. They had to do something to the existing bridge just to make it safe to use though.

You'd hope so, considering that they are also building a new bridge over South Road and the underpass at Torrens Junction which will become redundant if it later gets diverted onto the Port Road tram line.

I think the PortLink concept will get ditched soon, because the public overwhelmingly hates it and it will come to be used by the Liberals as a stick to beat the ALP in the shadow campaign before the 2018 election starts properly. This government is ridiculously out of touch with the public, but they do listen to their many media advisors.

I have to agree with statement but have to add with a election coming up soon pollies will promise you the earth but after they get in will conveniently forget the promise's made before the election. So really anything they say that is not cast in stone should be treated as an election sweetener. It just shows that they are desperate for votes by the look of it!

I think the PortLink concept will get ditched soon, because the public overwhelmingly hates it and it will come to be used by the Liberals as a stick to beat the ALP in the shadow campaign before the 2018 election starts properly.

My understanding was that Portlink had been shelved indefinitely and that the heavy rail would be staying for the time being; I thought the decision had been made to shelve it at the same time as they decided West Lakes stadium redevelopment wasn't going ahead any longer (therefore the light rail line from Woodville wouldn't be needed).

As we discussed earlier on another thread there really isn't that much of an advantage in converting the existing heavy rail line to a light rail operation - apart from the fact that tram services can be ran off it - it might actually end up making the services slower and with less peak capacity. I'm not sure that the expense in converting the line can really justify it... it's a nice concept to have those Semaphore and West Lakes extensions but there are more urgent priorities across South Australia in my opinion.

There has been a massive crane on the site for a while now while they construct the actual bridge spans on the Western side ot T2T project near the railway line on the Southern side. It was there a fortnight ago being used to assemble the bridge spans by the look of. They might have just moved it the short distance to do these spans for the road works though! If it was huge and blue that would be it then!

Thank God that part of South Road is gone, that's all I can say. I remember driving to work along that section of road years ago and the semi trailer in front of me scraped a stobie pole as it was going around the corner - not his fault, it was just the tight positioning of the pole and the cant of the road. Stupidly narrow for an arterial road and way too many intersections.

Another project quietly happening is the rebuilding and upgrading of Albert Park Station on the Grange line.
Along with track replacement between Woodville Station and Port Road during the January shutdown.


Both also nails in the PortLink tram concept.

Mike Rann getting kicked out of parliament was the final nail in the PortLink tram concept coffin.

The full list of works for the three week OH/Grange shutdown is:

- a $4 million upgrade of the Port River Rail Bridge (originally built in 1910), replacing the existing steel bridge spans with 20 spans made from Australian steel, which is expected to extend the life of the bridge by approximately 75 years

- replacement of track on the Grange line between Woodville station and Port Road

- essential maintenance works on rail level crossings at
Harris Street, Exeter
Hargrave Street, Birkenhead
Gedville Road, Taper

- station upgrades at
Grange
Taperoo
Peterhead
Ethelton
Cheltenham
Croydon
West Croydon
as well as continuation of upgrade works at Albert Park

- early works for the Torrens Junction rail project

- signal and power cable replacement at various locations

- vegetation and weed control activities

- switch timber replacements at Glanville Station

- Railcare art works at a number of locations

- essential preventative maintenance and inspection activities.

This almost looks like the revival of the archaic practice of coordinated maintenance which was so glaringly absent from the Seaford Line fiasco, well done DPTI.

My understanding was that Portlink had been shelved indefinitely and that the heavy rail would be staying for the time being; I thought the decision had been made to shelve it at the same time as they decided West Lakes stadium redevelopment wasn't going ahead any longer (therefore the light rail line from Woodville wouldn't be needed).

Mike Rann getting kicked out of parliament was the final nail in the PortLink tram concept coffin.

You're both thinking of the old Coast to Coast Light Rail 'proposal' which was a stunt for the 2010 state election. Along with the suggested conversion of the 3000/3100 class to 25kV EMUs and switching to standard gauge, it was killed off as soon as the ALP won the election (well before Rann's defenestration at the hands of the faceless men) because it had served its purpose.

The wider AdeLink (including PortLink) 'proposal' has sprung up more recently and will need to be killed off once again, and there have been public spin sessions held in recent months. The extensions down to the east end of North Terrace and through North Adelaide are the only parts I see as being a strong chance of actually happening, while I rate PortLink as a slim outside chance purely because John Rau's mates would love to get their hands on the land occupied by the rail corridor in central Port Adelaide and on the opposite side of the Port River.

I don't rate the Unley Road tram line as realistic, but a tram line heading east of the city to the east could be a realistic possibility if the rumours of 2017 being the last Clipsal 500 (interest is falling, and the current Minister for Sport hates it) turn out to be true. Future motorsport involvement from the state government is likely to be contained to subsidising events at the new Shahin family facility outside Tailem Bend.


On a different topic altogether, DPTI released the reports into the Lonsdale substation explosion which brought the Seaford line to a halt for two days in April this year. Read whatever you want out of them timing the release for the last business day before Christmas…

Lonsdale Circuit Breaker Investigation
23 Dec 2016

On 28 April 2016, Adelaide Metro lost power from the Lonsdale feeder station, shutting down electric services on the Seaford and Tonsley lines.

An electrical fault occurred inside the chamber of a circuit breaker, resulting in extensive damage to the circuit breaker.

Internal and external investigations were conducted.

An interim report by SAFEgroup, an independent report by Consolidated Power Projects and a Rail Incident Report by the Rail Commissioner, have concluded that the introduction of a contaminant during manufacture or commissioning of the circuit breaker was the most likely cause of the fault.

The type of fault was the first recorded of its kind and is considered a singular event. As this type of fault had never been detected before, the circuit breaker needed to be sent to Grenoble, France for analysis.

A new circuit breaker has now been installed and is fully operational. A number of other improvements have also been made to reduce the probability of this type of incident occurring again.

Consolidated Power Projects - Review of 66kV Primary and Secondary Plant at Lonsdale (PDF, 23526 KB)
Interim Investigation Report of 66KV Circuit Breaker Incident (PDF, 4876 KB)
Rail Incident Report - Circuit Breaker Failure - Lonsdale (PDF, 6183 KB)

I think that you will find that the Port River bridge was in worse shape than at first though so while they had the bridge for that shutdown in 2015 a thorough examination and testing was done on it and they found things that they did not know before hand. I assume that this bridge will be replaced with concrete decks like the Viaduct was to enable the track across it to be ballasted and use normal concrete sleeper's that cannot be used at the moment. They were just waiting for a window of opportunity to do it though, so they did a quick bit of a fix up just to make sure it was safe and when the line is completely shut they will do both hopefully. They had to do something to the existing bridge just to make it safe to use though.

A work compound has been set up on the same site as for the 2015 work, SE of the bridge.  A 250T crane is in position and a small stockpile of concrete sleepers is visible.  Photo taken this afternoon.

Alex C

Outer Harbour line closed from Monday 2/1/17 to 23/1 and South Road is also closed from the evening of Friday 6/1 to the morning of Monday 9/1 - as I understand it the formation of the new road alignments under the bridge will be completed by the end of next month too so we will get an idea of how it will all look.

It is my understanding that it will only be temporary roadways running under the new rail bridge at the end of January, with further excavation and road construction yet to come for the permanent roadways. A similar method is in use at the Grange Road intersection, where the road bridge was completed and started carrying Grange Road traffic well before excavations for the motorway lanes underneath the bridge started last week.

Both the T2T Alliance and Gateway South (Darlington Upgrade project) teams are doing quite well at handing back the roads on time or earlier, apart from a small number of overruns due to weather.  We should see the bridge construction finish on time for train services to resume on January 24 as scheduled, and if there are any delays they will probably come from the other rail works which will be happening over the same period.

The T2T Alliance have updated the rail bridge construction animation since the previous version was posted early in this thread:


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8-9Wgu5f42Q

The permanent location for all the T2T Alliance videos (some 3D animations, some videos of completed works) is at http://www.t2talliance.com.au/news/3d-animation/

Also at Woodville it appears that some work is going to be done concrete sleepers stacked up alongside the Grange track as well as new rail laying there. The might be going to resleeper both the main Grange track and the siding well complete the siding anyway as through the platform was already done. They might be going to resleeper to Port Road by the looks of it. I went past yesterday on my way to St Clair station and noticed it and a few vehicles were on site then.

The full list of works for the three week OH/Grange shutdown is:

...

- replacement of track on the Grange line between Woodville station and Port Road

...

New turnout and concrete bearers for the start of single line plus new rail for both tracks visible yesteday.

I also noticed yesterday that the level crossing to nowhere at Kilkenny is no longer, gates and lights having been removed.  Was this recent?

Alex C

You'd hope so, considering that they are also building a new bridge over South Road and the underpass at Torrens Junction which will become redundant if it later gets diverted onto the Port Road tram line.

I gather there is a vague plan to take light rail through the new dive and along War memorial drive, past the Oval into KWR. Never mind the details about lowering the new Bowden station to tram height.

The full list of works for the three week OH/Grange shutdown is:

...

- replacement of track on the Grange line between Woodville station and Port Road

...

New turnout and concrete bearers for the start of single line plus new rail for both tracks visible yesteday.

I also noticed yesterday that the level crossing to nowhere at Kilkenny is no longer, gates and lights having been removed.  Was this recent?

Alex C

Yes it was removed completely about a month or so ago after a decade or more of being there but not able to be used. To let you interstate know Shearers at on time at Kilkenny had plants both sides of the mainline there and a protected level crossing was installed so that they could go from one side of the tracks to the other without using public roads, it was a private level crossing and could only be accessed from Shearer's property. The company then decided to scale back operations and one plant closed and so the level crossing was left to operate for well over a decade, possibly two maybe every time a train ran on the Outer Harbor line.

You'd hope so, considering that they are also building a new bridge over South Road and the underpass at Torrens Junction which will become redundant if it later gets diverted onto the Port Road tram line.

I gather there is a vague plan to take light rail through the new dive and along War memorial drive, past the Oval into KWR. Never mind the details about lowering the new Bowden station to tram height.

If the new station at Bowden is like the more recent ones like St Clair for example it could be taken apart and used elsewhere it is just a concrete top sitting on steel pillars. Not hard to remove at all and less costly to dismantle.

I also noticed yesterday that the level crossing to nowhere at Kilkenny is no longer, gates and lights having been removed.  Was this recent?

Alex C

Yes it was removed completely about a month or so ago after a decade or more of being there but not able to be used. To let you interstate know Shearers at on time at Kilkenny had plants both sides of the mainline there and a protected level crossing was installed so that they could go from one side of the tracks to the other without using public roads, it was a private level crossing and could only be accessed from Shearer's property. The company then decided to scale back operations and one plant closed and so the level crossing was left to operate for well over a decade, possibly two maybe every time a train ran on the Outer Harbor line.

Thanks for the update.  I was sure that it was still there the previous time I passed several months ago.

You'd hope so, considering that they are also building a new bridge over South Road and the underpass at Torrens Junction which will become redundant if it later gets diverted onto the Port Road tram line.

I gather there is a vague plan to take light rail through the new dive and along War memorial drive, past the Oval into KWR. Never mind the details about lowering the new Bowden station to tram height.

If the new station at Bowden is like the more recent ones like St Clair for example it could be taken apart and used elsewhere it is just a concrete top sitting on steel pillars. Not hard to remove at all and less costly to dismantle.

Bowden will be below ground so very different. It will be 120m long in line with the 4 car standard for the line. Whether it will be designed to allow lowering is not known. I didn't think StClair was modular for easy removal, good thinking if it was.

While not modular in the true sense of the word, they can be unbolted and the whole lot or parts reused else where if it is ever needed. Most modern Adelaide Metro stations are the same made up of pieces just like a kit is. Oaklands is slightly different again as it has earth fill but the concrete used to hold the earth fill in place was all modular sections that fitted together to make the platform. So I would assume that the new Bowden platform even if it is down in a cutting would be of similar construction thus easily removed if it is ever needed to be done.

I doubt though that the tram proposal will ever get done, but then again stranger things have happened though!

Observations today.

At lunchtime track removal between Queen St and South Rd was well underway.  There appear to be just two bridge sections (rather than the three shown in the animation) being readied for lifting in the yard between Euston Terrace and Princes St.

Work on the Port River Bridge has also started with the erection today of scaffold platforms and guard rails on the up track.  Two rail trolleys each about 6m in length and each fitted with a lifting frame will be used to lift the old bridge spans and lower the replacement spans into place. Late this afternoon the first of the lifting frames with a brace support were being fitted to one of the trolleys.  With 20 spans to be done in 3 weeks, that's an average of one span a day. It will be interesting to watch the progress.

** Edited to add photo of lifting frame being erected on trolley **

Some activity at Torrens Park today. I wonder if they are finally rebuilding that Mechano set into a proper station.

Hopefully they are preparing to remove the shelter and install it at a more deserving location which has higher patronage. There would have to be hundreds of bus stops around the network which have far higher patronage and currently no shelter.

I also wonder whether efficiency gains could be made by trialling the operation of Torrens Park as a request stop, where passengers wishing to alight advise the driver using the intercom and passengers wishing to board would hail the train like they do at tram and bus stops. Many trains would consequently be able to go through at around 25 km/h rather than stopping completely, which would help reduce operating costs and allow many late trains to make up just enough time to keep the delays from spiralling out of control.

Hopefully they are preparing to remove the shelter and install it at a more deserving location which has higher patronage. There would have to be hundreds of bus stops around the network which have far higher patronage and currently no shelter.

I also wonder whether efficiency gains could be made by trialling the operation of Torrens Park as a request stop, where passengers wishing to alight advise the driver using the intercom and passengers wishing to board would hail the train like they do at tram and bus stops. Many trains would consequently be able to go through at around 25 km/h rather than stopping completely, which would help reduce operating costs and allow many late trains to make up just enough time to keep the delays from spiralling out of control.

A step back in time. Install the train stop indicators that used to be on the Hills Line at places like Pinera and Glenalta.
Torrens Park does get a bit of use, I have seen many pax leaving or going to the station when waiting at the adjacent traffic lights.