The Southern Portal is important because it allows the trains to enter and exit into the Cross River Rail tunnels.
This site is really complex because we're working in a live rail corridor. There's a
lot of constraints and complexities, so there's tight spatial constraints, unknown services and
a high safety standard you've got to maintain.
It's always been known as a really technically tricky area to build in
because there's such a convergence of different rail lines into that location.
So the challenge really was how do we get out of the tunnel portal
and get back into the rail connection, but do it in a way where we've got the least amount of disruption,
but be able to maintain the sort of level of standard that you need for a modern railway.
The key challenge for us, was how do you fit in the tunnel portal and the two new lines
plus all the station infrastructure required to be able to service the Cross River Rail project.
So when Brodie and I got this challenge of how do we reconfigure the Southern Area,
I guess it was daunting in some ways that we didn't know how much it could be improved.
I remember sort of thinking about all these different things we could sort of challenge
in terms of the clearances in the tunnel, and all these other aspects,
but as we tried to solve one part of the puzzle it only made another part of the puzzle worse,
and so we had to sort of take a big step back and re-look at what was the operational requirements we really needed
to simplify or reduce the operational requirements north of Dutton Park.
The challenge was to resolve a lot of technical mainline geometry issues in the Southern Portal
and going from the surface down into the tunnel.
The original design sort of had a split portal configuration which made it really difficult to get the geometry outcomes we needed to align with the standards
to solve that we went from a split portal structure to a single cut and cover structure
where both tracks would go down into the same section of the tunnel.
In relation to the platform at Dutton Park one of the challenges was to ensure that we got the actual platform gap itself down to a tolerable standard
given the adverse rail alignment geometry that we had
To ensure that we got an adequate gap down at Dutton Park station we realigned the tracks to make the curves slightly bigger
to make sure that the train was close enough to platform face for our customers.
The best outcome though was the solution at Dutton Park because the station that we were going to have
was almost like a hybrid solution and it really probably wasn't going to serve the purpose that we wanted.
By bringing the thoughts together, some knowledge from Queensland Rail, some suggestions on having you know convex platforms
rather than having an island platform, that type of lateral thinking really came together
Working with Queensland Rail, we developed a solution there that minimised impact to the travelling public,
but also recognising the fact that we did have to close train lines down to deliver the work
otherwise the project timelines couldn't be met.
It's a super important part of the network for us today and it's going to be even more important for us tomorrow when Cross River Rail is in operation.
So making sure that we can have the right functionality from an operational point of view, is super important
Making sure it's A: constructable, that's the first thing,
but also maintainable so we can achieve the right levels of reliability for our customers
is of critical importance so, for us it's all about how do we service a customer with the right outcome.
A significant amount of work has been delivered to the Southern Area over a short period of time
it's also been delivered over a number of rail possessions which have been spread over
months, all culminating and with the main cut over of the rail works.
I think the challenge with large complex projects is unfortunately the answer isn't sat inside one person's head
So to get the you know to optimize the value-engineered solution which these sorts of challenges require
means that you need to synthesize the collective intelligence of a range of different subject
matter experts not only in the construction also in the maintenance, also in the operation so what
was really critical for us is that's essentially a creative process you can only really get people
to engage in that kind of creativity if you've got that strong working relationship and a degree of
trust between all participants.
So critical for us was the the trust and dynamic that was in place between Queensland Rail staff and obviously the Cross River Rail team.
Look, I think people will see it they won't appreciate the level of effort that's gone into it but there's those amongst us who were there,
who will actually appreciate it every time we get on the train the Dutton Park or Boggo Road.