Fulfen Wood Overbridge

The Fulfen Wood Overbridge is an ‘intersection bridge structure’ that will allow Britain’s new high-speed railway to pass beneath the West Coast Main Line at Fulfen Wood near Lichfield, on its route going north of Birmingham Curzon Street Station up to Crewe.

The bridge structure was installed under the busy existing railway line during a nine-day closure of a section of the railway between Rugby and Stafford in July 2023.

Bridge construction

The installation of the Fulfen Wood Overbridge was the UK’s heaviest drive to install an intersection bridge structure with around 300 people involved in the work.

Over the two days before the move the team removed the railway track and excavated over 15,000 cubic metres of material to create the space for the structure to be moved into. The giant 6,200-tonne concrete structure, which was built adjacent to the West Coast Main Line over a period of six months, was then slowly manoeuvred into place during a nine-day closure of the railway. It was moved using an 840-wheeled transporter specifically designed for heavy lifting that had four carrier beams controlled by a remote steering system.