Repairs March 2016

The second phase of repairs to the Tunnels in the Great Whyte began in March 2016, by the same Swedish Construction Company SKANSKA.  A section of tunnel, underneath the central pavement was exposed, opposite the TSB Bank, which showed the tunnel roof had started to sag inwards.  It was repaired by putting a wooden former underneath the arch, removing the bricks, then re-building the arch again with new engineering bricks, the same as they did in 2014.

When this small section had been fixed they realised that the rest of the tunnel was in the same condition and was unsafe to repair in the same way.  So an alternative plan was made, it consisted of scaffolding the tunnel from the position shown, up to the Chamber near the clock inside the tunnel and putting what they called a crash decking on it.  This enabled them to take the roof of the tunnel down in a controlled way, with the crash decking protecting the river below. The slideshow below shows the crash decking.