Walsh Draughting Services – Case Study

A Partnership Based on High Professional Standards

It is inevitable that a steel fabricator such as Jamestown, with their industry-wide reputation for high standards and wide-ranging capabilities, will tend to find themselves working with a draughting company that is similarly well known in the construction sector for its highly accurate and technically-advanced drawing services.  It is therefore unsurprising that Walsh Draughting Services and Jamestown have often worked together on challenging and complex projects.

Accuracy Using the Latest Technology

Walsh Drawing Services specialise in detailed and complex steel structure design services.  They use the latest industry operating systems, such as 3 D modelling. Their use of sophisticated software means that they can produce automated fabrication files, which Jamestown can use to speed up the fabrication process and ensure that time is not lost on site correcting errors.

Time-Critical Projects

This accurate draughting and fabrication has proved crucial for projects such as the Mauldeth Road and Fog Lane rail bridges in Manchester, which needed to be replaced within a very tight time-scale, because both were on the busy line between Manchester city centre and the airport.  The construction company, Murphy, had just fifty-one hours to remove the existing bridges and replace them with new u-type steel decks on reinforced concrete cill beams. The new bridges were prefabricated off-site and installed using a self-propelled modular transporter.

Plemstall Lane and Duffield Road Bridges

Other Murphy railway bridge projects on which Walsh and Jamestown collaborated include the Plemstall Lane bridge on the Chester to Warrington line at Mickle Trafford, and the Duffield Road bridge in Reading.  At Plemstall Lane, an innovative system was used whereby the bridge was assembled at ground level and lifted using a gantry. The bridge structure, which weighed 175 tonnes, was moved using a self-propelled modular transporter.  The Duffield Road railway bridge was replaced as part of the electrification of the Great Western Main Line from Paddington to Bristol. In this case, the work was completed in short spells over a period of six months, including on Christmas Day, to avoid closing the rail line.