Railway line moved to make way for metro
30.03.2021
A major Sydney railway line has been picked up and moved in just 48 hours, to make way for the brand new Sydney Metro.
The Sydney Trains T1 North Shore Line had to be permanently realigned, between Chatswood and Artarmon, because the existing suburban railway tracks were effectively blocking the new city-bound Sydney Metro.
A team of 250 workers completed the critical track work at Chatswood, so that Sydney Metro can be extended from the city’s north west into the Sydney CBD and beyond to Bankstown.
The northbound Sydney Trains track, which was first built in 1890, was cut and moved to connect with new tracks 20 metres to the west, to make way for the Metro North West Line to extend into the new twin metro tunnels.
The huge operation took 48 hours to cut, slew and join the existing suburban line with almost 900 metres of new track and about 2.5 kilometres of new overhead wiring.
So far almost 11 kilometres of track and more than 10,000 railway sleepers have been installed as part of the Sydney Metro City & Southwest project.
All up, 62 kilometres of Australian-made rail steel weighing more than 4,000 tonnes will be used to lay 31 kilometres of railway tracks in the twin tunnels between Chatswood and Sydenham.
Sydney Metro rail services between Chatswood, the Sydney CBD and Bankstown start in 2024, when Sydney will have 31 Metro railway stations and a 66-kilometre standalone metro railway system.