RAKAIA RAILWAY BRIDGE

Press, Volume LXXIV, Issue 22515, 24 September 1938, Page 16

RAKAIA RAILWAY BRIDGE

DELAYED CONSTRUCTION COMPLETION EXPECTED IN EIGHTEEN MONTHS [THE PRESS Special Service.] TIMARU, September 23. The new Rakaia railway bridge will be ready in about 18 months. Delayed deliveries of steel ordered from England have caused a delay in the construction of the bridge, according to a statement by the Hon. D. G. Sullivan, Minister for Railways. The bridge, which will cost about £BO,OOO, will consist of 143 40-foot steel girder spans, supported on concrete piers, each resting on a foundation of reinforced concrete piles. The piles are 30 feet long and are being driven about 25 feet into the shingle river-bed. In some places the driving is exceedingly hard, and it has been found necessary at times to drill a pipe for 15 or 20 feet below the bed level, through which to explode a charge of dynamite to enable the piles to penetrate. The total weight of steel to be used will be 1800 tons, and the whole job will require more than 4500 cubic yards of concrete. The cement used will total approximately 1050 tons, all of it of New Zealand manufacture. The concrete aggregates are being won from the

river-bed bx a drag-line scoop discharging into a crushing and screening plant. There will be 1136 concrete piles in the bridge; 764 of these have been driven to date. Seventy-one of the total of 144 piers have been completed. The old wooden bridge, built in the early seventies in 20-foot spans of timber beams supported on timber pile piers, was originally 4500 feet long; but in 1882, after a series of troubles with wash-outs and erosions, the structure was lengthened to 6000 feet. The extension of 1500 feet replaced the approach embankment at the southern end.