A chat with our Sustrans Project Manager, Paddy Tully

Paddy Tully and Frank Tompson shared an informal chat about the scheme (Just click on the link)

An opportunity for people to see Paddy (pictured left) 'in the flesh' and for him to talk about some of the challenges and achievements alive in the Two Tunnels Project.

(Dome Room in the Guildhall following the 27 Apr 11 Steering Group meeting.)

Recording Devonshire Tunnel before work begins

Photoshoot of the interior (just click on the link)

A brief impromptu record for any tunnel enthusiasts of when Graeme Bickerdike and his lighting engineer Ron visited the inside of Devonshire Tunnel on Thursday 7 April 2011 to make a historical photographic record of its condition before work starts to make it fit for its new purpose in the next few months.

Graeme's Forgotten Relics website contains many excellent records of railway tunnels, cuttings, bridges, viaducts and other structures inheritted from the awesome endeavours of 19th Century railway pioneers.

Pictures from the photo shoot will be available at www.forgottenrelics.co.uk from 1 May 2011.

Route Walk - Saturday 26 March 2011

To mark a mile of surfacing Linear Park from Devonshire Tunnel to the Network Rail Bridge







62 people and a few dogs gathered in the sunshine to travel the 4 miles from the Royal Oak pub in Bath to the Hope and Achor pub in Midford.

The star of the show was Frank Smith. At age 88 Frank had travelled over from Glastonbury to make the walk, and looked as fit as anyone going up the hills!

Possibly the last route walk as completion is now in sight.

A short ride from Devonshire Tunnel to Monksdale Road

A short ride from Devonshire Tunnel to Monksdale Road

(Just click on the link)

First section of Linear Park now open!

A short walk from Devonshire Tunnel to Hiscocks Drive bridge (Just click on the link above)

Update from Project Manager, Paddy Tully

Bitmac has now been laid on section 1 of the site from Bloomfield Road to Hiscox’s Drive bridge, although a 20m section prior to the bridge has been left at B&NES request as they are due to carry out repair works to the structure in February, at which time this section will be surfaced. The new section of bitmac should be open to use by Wednesday or Thursday (27 January) this week. We are approximately 3 days behind programme, mainly due to the amount of rain that fell the week before last which made conditions on site difficult to work with. The trackway across Bloomfield Road open space will be removed in the middle of this week and the contractor will make good any damage under this. Works will then commence on section 2 (Hiscocks Drive Bridge – Monksdale Road), although it is likely that these won’t start in earnest until 31 January.

Paddy Tully
Sustrans Two Tunnels Senior Engineer

Sat 22 Jan 11 - An update on continuing work on Linear Park

Linear Park work continues with the first Bitmac (Tarmac) now having been laid - (Just click the link)

Two Tunnels Project - Linear Park start of work - YouTube

Two Tunnels Project - Linear Park start of work - (Just click the link)

Linear Park Surfacing: start of physical work

Hydrock's digger awaits duty on the Two Tunnels route.

Two opportunities in one, a quick mid-day visit to the start of the surfacing works on Bath's emerging 'Two Tunnels' route with a chance to grab a bite to eat in the form of an 'Angelo' from Bear Flat's excellent 'Da Vinci' delicatessen.

Here, the digger that will be used to lay the surface for Linear Park waits at the top of the public open space on the Monday morning of the tenth of January.

It's a smaller digger than the two used by the contractors that made such a good job of excavating Devonshire Tunnel - Hope and Clay - but Hydrock, who will be working on this section of Linear Park, have a different task and won't need to move thousands of tonnes of spoil.

Hydrock are pleased to be involved in the construction of the flagship Two Tunnels route, particularly because they've worked on the route in the past - in the nineteen nineties the firm produced an engineering appraisal of Combe Down Tunnel in support of the previous campaign to build a 'Two Tunnels route'. They also have local connections, Hydrock were involved in the extensive stabilisation and infilling work carried out to an extensive range of unstable stone mines beneath Combe Down. (Thankfully, those mines had no impact on Combe Down Tunnel itself, the mines and the tunnel being separated by a great thickness of solid rock)

You'll see the digger has rubber tracks rather than steel ones - this has big advantages for this sort of work, the tracks exert much less pressure on the ground than steel tracks: this is more kind to anything underlying the route, and the machine can be driven on completed work with minimal impact.

Not representative of the whole stretch,
but some parts of Linear Park
are a bit of an ordeal ...

The physical work involves excavating to a depth of 10 to 100 millimetres and three metres wide, laying an impermeable membrane. On top of this goes a foundation, and then, in turn, a surface layer that will form the actual path. Certain sections will benefit from a drain too.

Before starting on the route itself, the first task for the contractors is to put down a haul road across the public open space, as was done for the excavation works to Devonshire Tunnel. This will allow materials to be brought to the route with minimal impact on the grassed park, allowing work to start on the route itself.