A six-month project to rehabilitate a 140-year-old railway bridge over Salkeld Street has commenced. This bridge repair is part of a broader £1.5 million program to restore bridges near Glasgow Central Station.

The steel structure, spanning Salkeld Street and the West Coast Main Line, will undergo extensive repairs, including "rivet busting" to replace corroded rivets, steelwork repairs, and repainting. Additionally, engineers will implement "ballast retention" measures to prevent the stone ballast supporting the rails from falling onto the street below.

Network Rail and principal contractor Story have established a site compound at an existing railway depot on Salkeld Street to facilitate the repair work, which is expected to be completed by March 2025.

Christina Thomson, scheme project manager, Network Rail, said: "The essential maintenance and renewals work at Salkeld Street bridge helps Network Rail continue to run a safe and reliable railway throughout Glasgow and the surrounding areas.

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"This vital work will not only improve the look of the 140-year-old bridge, it will also extend its lifespan for up to two decades.

"We appreciate the impact our activity will have on those living closest to the bridge and while we will do all we can to minimise this, we are limited in terms of what measures can be put in place to mitigate against some the nosier elements generated by the heavier engineering, such as the rivet busting activity.

"We are grateful to the community for their patience while we complete this significant improvement work."

Scaffolding will be in place for the duration of the works to allow engineers to safely work on the structure.

Work has started at the west side of the bridge and will continue until later this month, with a single-lane closure in place on the northbound road underneath the bridge. Work will then switch to the east side until later in November, with a southbound single-lane closure in place.

As the work at Salkeld Street nears completion, a similar programme of renewal works will start to the railway bridge at Eglinton Street and Network Rail will provide an update ahead of this.

The bridge works are part of a wide-ranging bridge modernisation programme aimed at protecting and improving Scotland’s Railway, with over £1.95 billion being invested to increase reliability and improve performance.