The painting of the 118-year-old Forth Bridge, dubbed "the paint job that never ends", is expected to be finally completed by 2012.
The announcement was made today after engineering and construction company Balfour Beatty was awarded the £74 million contract, by owner Network Rail, to finish the paint job on the iconic steel structure.
Balfour Beatty had already been working on the restoration and re-painting of the Forth Bridge, part of the East Coast Main Line north of Edinburgh, for the past six years. Prior to that, attempts to repaint patches of the bridge where paint had been worn away with time were abandoned in favour of repainting the whole 51,000 tonne bridge using a longer-lasting "glass flake epoxy" formula.
Balfour Beatty says that the work on the Forth Bridge will be carried out in a series of phased
operations at different locations at the same time. Scaffold will be erected and the work areas screened from the
environment before the existing layers of paint, applied over the last
120 years, are removed using an abrasive blasting technique. Steelwork
requiring maintenance will then be repaired before the new paint is
applied in three protective layers, to preserve the steelwork "for years
to come."
"Working on this iconic railway structure presents a number of unique challenges. However, together with Network Rail, we will be able to build on our long-term partnership to complete this challenging and fundamentally important work. By 2012, the bridge will be fully restored to its original condition," said Balfour Beatty Chief Executive, Ian Tyler.