NEW RAILWAY STATION

Sun (Auckland), Volume II, Issue 558, 10 January 1929, Page 6

NEW RAILWAY STATION

FOUNDATIONS ALMOST COMPLETE STEEL WORK TO START tin., WEEK ! Nine months' work, and the «. railway station has reached tk surface level in the network , squares, upon which, in the L #f week, the structural steel wiliT raised. Then the building Jit assume its proportions rapidly. After this nine months, during wh ■ more than 1.000 piles have been d - down to rock bottom for the station *** the platform, the building is a , 2“* point when most other structure* The pile-driving was carried out a steam hammer on a moveable c riage with a tower Soft high, the engine weighing 40 tons. Th. o. , Ane con. crete piles, reinforced with steel. 0 driven through the soft mud down to solid foundation, most of them pe n & trating through 40ft. OLD HISTORY In the line of an old gully whicc reached across the site the piles wetdown to 70ft. but the old breakwater which used to stretch across Mechanic Bay was struck several times. All sorts of buried history was by the pile driving. The engineers found that an old wooden tunnel through which logs used to be draw” up to a timber mill was still there and that the solid timber still resisted. The bed of a wool press, of concrete imbedded with steel rails, gave them trouble. In the foundation of one old building which was also in the wav were old deck girders, guessed to have once belonged to the ship City 0 f Wellington. Now the piles have all been driven in groups of four and six at intervals of about 20ft and they have been laced together with steel and concrete to make a network showing on the surface level. At each juncture the pile-tops have been ripped away with air-pres-sure machines, and bolts have been set in to fit perfectly in the holes of the steel stanchions, shortly to be raised on end with cranes and bolted down. ARMY OF WORKERS An army of 250 men is putting the finishing touches to these foundations of the station building itself and giving the ramps and subways and verandahs of the platforms a recognisable appearance. Masons are. or rather were, because there is a strike on just now, shaping the Coromandel granite to the stones which, accurate to a hairbreadth, will fit into the face of the building when the steel and concrete frame is erected. Rising in giant pillars, six feet by three, is the boxing for three of the eight concrete columns to carry the weight of brick and granite of the main frontage of the building. All the other stanchions w'ill be of steel covered with concrete, and weighing from four tons to one ton. Concrete-mixers, capable of producing BUyds a day are feeding an endless chain of barrows for filling in the network and for the finishing off *of the platform ramps. From the station proper, a concrete subway runs, like a rabbit burrow, to feed the four platforms. The subway is complete except for the tiling. At each platform a ramp runs -up steeply to the rail level. COMPLETE PLATFORM One platform, about 900 ft in length, needs only the asphalting. This will be the Main Trunk platform and the concrete verandah is supported by a double row of pillars. Another of the platforms is almost finished. An ingenious scheme was used to fill in the boxing of the verandahs. A ccn-crete-mixer was fitted with a tower and put on rails so that it could be moved along and the concrete poured in with a minimum of hand labourThe roofs of the verandahs slope in to the middle and the stormwater is caught in copper pipes and taken drainage system, out of sight. Two systems of drainage have been put down and the water supply will come from two mains. When the visitor sees the workmen shovelling the shingle, sand, cement and hydrated lime into the mixer, d wonders how the proper proportion )» kept. The clerk of works sees to « that the contractors are putting in right mixture. He goes about with a small box and takes a sample of tn concrete. The cube is dried and the" sent to the university to be crusneoIf the test was not up to standard, th section of the work would be condemned. The tests have been gooa m far, and the methods of MCE'eening grading the shingle have made then higher than was thought possible a ie years ago. _ _. h(l Another unbiassed person checks up the contractors is the Q tity surveyor, who amount of material put into thejo the clerk of works is concerned wi the quality. Two 90ft masts will be position in a week and they W' handle the steel, placing each beam and stanchion in **• ". f or position. The contract t.rno n the work was 21 mmonth* expected that in anot *J**V2 ™j|| be the station and platform complete.