A high-speed railway through marshlands (CTRL) Available to Purchase

Providing a high-speed railway from the Channel Tunnel to London St Pancras has brought a wide variety of engineering challenges. This paper describes some major features of contract 310 of the Channel Tunnel Rail Link (CTRL), where the challenge was the construction of a high-speed railway formation across marshlands adjacent to the River Thames. Contract 310 provided the main civils works from where the Thames tunnel emerges westward from under the Thames to the start of the London tunnel just to the west of Dagenham Dock Station leading to Stratford and St Pancras. The contract extends over 12 km on an alignment mostly at grade through Aveley, Wennington and Rainham Marshes where, for the most part, the railway formation is supported on concrete piled slabs. In some areas, ground strengthening has been used instead. Three significant viaducts carry the track over obstacles from roads, railways and rivers (Thurrock, Aveley and Rainham Creek Viaducts). Construction started in January 2002 and was completed in July 2005.