CRL Connection
November 2018
Weight of heritage building transferred to new foundations One of the most complex challenges for the City Rail Link (CRL) project – transferring the weight of the 106-yearold Chief Post Office (CPO) building onto temporary foundations – has now been completed. The weight transfer follows two years of planning and preparation by local and international experts and enables CRL tunnelling works to begin under the CPO building. CRL’s Head Delivery Manager, Scott Elwarth, says protecting the heritage features of the CPO building has been a priority for the project. “To enable us to construct CRL tunnels under the heritage building, we had to remove a number of existing foundations. To do this, we had to first support the building on underpinning frames and in doing so limited any movement to less than one or two milimetres,” he says. “In all, we had to transfer 4,000 tonnes of the building weight onto the frames. So much depended on this being 100 per cent successful. There was absolutely no room for error.”
The existing Britomart Station has “dead-end” tunnels, meaning trains end their journeys there and must exit the same way they came in. The CRL will change that by extending those tunnels and turning Britomart into a two-way through station, adding a 3.45km underground rail link, up to 42 metres below the city centre, between downtown Auckland and Eden Terrace. There will be new underground stations – one mid-town with entrances at Wellesley and Victoria Streets and one off Karangahape Road with entrances at Mercury Lane and Beresford Square. The existing Mount Eden station will be re-developed and the CRL tunnels will connect to the North Auckland (Western) Line at this location. When the CRL opens in 2024, Aucklanders will have a better connected and more efficient rail network that can take twice as many train services at peak. Watch the video about the CPO weight transfer
info@CityRailLink.govt.nz | CityRailLink.co.nz
CityRailLink
1