A partnership of Skanska/ and BAM Nuttall has won a £200M contract to build a viaduct in Manchester linking Piccadilly railway station, which gives access to London Euston and the Midlands, with Victoria station, the city’s second largest station which serves Liverpool and destinations to the north and east of the city. The stations will be linked for the first time in almost a century.
The work will include construction of key structures in Manchester city centre. This investment will help ease a rail bottleneck to the south of Piccadilly station and enable faster, more frequent services to run across the North of England. It forms part of the Northern Hub project to improve railway service cross northern England which is to be finished in 2019.
The new viaduct, linking Ordsall from the Castlefield Junction line to the Deal Street Junction line, will supplement the Manchester tram system in linking the three main Manchester stations. Victoria station is to be renovated as part of the Northern hub project improvements to the railway around Manchester Piccadilly and Oxford Road stations. Renovation work costing £44m began in April this year and is expected to be complete in spring 2015.
The Ordsall curve viaduct will take trains in December 2016. Network Rail has submitted a Transport and Works Act order for the project and work is expected to begin late in 2014 or early in 2015.
The contract award is in the standstill period, as set out in European Union procurement rules.
