BESIX at work for 9 days & nights in the Kennedy railway tunnel in Antwerp
On behalf of rail network operator Infrabel and its subsidiary TUC RAIL, BESIX carried out works on the Kennedy railway tunnel in Antwerp for nine consecutive days in February. During this period, train traffic was interrupted and diverted for safety reasons. The works were part of the modernisation of the 50-year-old tunnel and were completed successfully.
9 days non-stop for a safer tunnel
The Kennedy railway tunnel, which connects Antwerp's left and right banks, dates back to 1969. High time, then, to adapt the safety equipment to today's standards. During a nine-day break in the winter holidays, BESIX teams carried out various modernisation works, working day and night.
Over a distance of 3.5 km, the old cable ducts next to the tracks were removed and new ones installed. Later, many new cables will be installed, which will be kept separate to avoid interference between the different types of cables. New grid floors were also installed in the ventilation shaft, and emergency exits were modified including new fire doors to meet the latest safety standards.
Only one entrance in a 50-year-old tunnel
The race against the clock in a limited space presented the teams with several challenges, not least of which were logistical. The tunnel lies some 10 metres under the Scheldt and is 1.7 km long. With only one single entrance and exit used for moving people, equipment and machines, the teams had to coordinate activities well.
"In order to be able to work on the grid floors located in the middle of the tunnel, part of the tunnel was inaccessible for three days due to a track being blocked by these works. It was therefore important to coordinate the works properly," says Jasper Degraeuwe, BESIX Project Engineer.
During the nights, a lane was also cleared in the Kennedy Road Tunnel, which runs in the same shaft. This extra access helped the teams to realise the adapted emergency exits.
In addition to the logistics, the teams had to deal with 50-year-old infrastructure, for which the original plans are unreliable.
"During such a ‘Total Line Interruption’, there is no room for error and this creates extra pressure for the team. It is then important to think in problem-solving terms when unexpected things come up while literally uncovering certain layers," says Degraeuwe.
A family affair
However, this was hardly the first Total Line Interruption for BESIX in Belgium. Train traffic is often temporarily interrupted in order to renew railway infrastructure at record speed. Last year, BESIX spent a weekend working non-stop for Infrabel to carry out major infrastructure work at Diepenbeek as part of the Spartacus project. This included pushing a 12-metre-long tunnel under the tracks. In Aalter-Beernem, along one of the busiest train lines in the country, a similar operation was carried out; while BESIX’s affiliate in Wallonia, Socogetra, did the same with a 38-metre-long tunnel pushed under the tracks at Braine-le-Comte. Finally, in the heart of Antwerp, a Total Line Interruption was planned to renovate the Draakplaats railway viaduct. This team was also there to support its colleagues in the Kennedy railway tunnel.
Van den Berg, a BESIX Group subsidiary specialising in cable and pipeline infrastructure, also contributed to the works in Kennedy railway tunnel during the Total Line Interruption. Moreover, their teams are currently installing a large number of tunnel technical installations, as well as no less than the equivalent of 36 km of cable works for the power supply and the control of these techniques. In case of an incident in the tunnel, these techniques will allow to activate certain mechanisms in a fully automated manner so that appropriate measures can be taken to evacuate travellers and to respond to the incident.