Dashwood Overbridge Realignment

Located south of Blenheim and designed to improve road user safety and travel times, the project consisted of 2.2km of ‘green fields’ road realignment.

Prior to the completion of this project, the overbridge road with its poor layout and tight curves was highly prone to accidents. In addition the rail overbridge itself was not up to earthquake standards and was too narrow for a state highway.

Starting in 2013, the project hit one of its major milestones in winter 2014 with the completion of the multiplate culvert over the main south trunk rail line.  The culvert was completed one week ahead of the scheduled program and without any interference to train time schedules.  Taking 15 weeks to complete, the culvert consists of 54 metres of multiplate (200 plates) held together with over 7700 bolts.

Higgins Nelson and Blenheim crews combined to complete the next big portion of work involving simultaneous works to backfill over the multi-plate arch and the keystone retaining walls.