A STATE-OF-THE-ART machine is being used to tunnel beneath a stretch of railway in East Renfrewshire as part of a £120m water mains engineering work.
Scottish Water is using a Tunnel Boring Machine (TBM) to install two parallel sections of concrete water main of around 85 metres each beneath the railway line to the south of Barrhead.
The work is part of a major investment in the drinking water network in Ayrshire and parts of East Renfrewshire which will benefit more than 200,000 people and businesses.
Caledonia Water Alliance, Scottish Water’s alliance partners, have been using the TBM, which is is about five metres long and is remotely operated.
It had to go under the Neilston railway line at Barrhead, near Balgraystone Road and Balgray Reservoir, because no other alternative crossing method was available.
It is part of a the first key stage involving a 13 mile-long section of water main from near Newton Mearns to the Fenwick/Waterside area.
The route of this, which mainly goes over farmland and open moorland, starts at Waulkmill Glen reservoir near Newton Mearns.
Road users may also have seen lengths of blue piping near the M77 when the work goes south via Drumboy Hill to Amlaird Water Treatment Works near Fenwick, with branches to the South Moorhouse and Corsehouse water treatment works.
In another major engineering challenge on the same phase of the project, special geological engineering techniques are being used to enable the installation of a 2.5 mile long stretch of the water main where its route goes across peat bogland on Fenwick Moor to the south.
Stewart Davis, Scottish Water’s programme manager, said: "The peat, by its nature, is a soft and wet material which does not have the competent geological structure to support a steel pipe which weighs four tonnes per 13 metre length when full of water.
"So our engineering solution was to excavate to competent clay type soil and then fill the ground back up again with imported stone to provide a competent structure to lay the pipe on."
"The work on the peatland on Fenwick Moor, and under the railway line near Barrhead, have presented us with major engineering challenges but we have met or are meeting those challenges head-on and progressing well with this important first phase of the overall project."
The project was announced in December 2015 and will install more than 30 miles of new water mains to connect the system in Ayrshire with the Greater Glasgow area’s network.
Scottish Water say it will enable a greater security of supply and allow it to respond more effectively to operational issues such as burst water mains and minimise disruption to customers.
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules here