The Anonymous Widower

Marshgate Lane Goes Under Northern Outfall Sewer

Marshgate Lane is one of the main routes to get heavy equipment into the Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park.

The pictures don’t tell the full story.

Before the construction of the Olympics started, it was a lane under the Northern Outfall Sewer, the massive set of four Victorian pipes which take away an awful lot of North London’s waste water to the pumping station at Abbey Mills before it is pumped to the Beckton works for treatment.

For the Olympics, the lane was not going to be used, but afterwards, it needed to be upgraded to a full height underpass, so that HGVs could get into the site.

So before the Olympics, a contract was negotiated to dig the underpass, through as the name Marshgate Lane suggests, not the best of soils.

I heard rumours from Thames Water engineers, that British contractors were rather pleased that the difficult contract was awarded to a German construction company.

The rumours also said that the Germans lost considerable sums of money on what was one of the more expensive projects for the Olympics.

At least they didn’t make the mistake of damaging the sewer and dumping the proceeds from over a million or so toilets all over the Olympic site.

They’d have really been in the sh*t then!

September 18, 2016 - Posted by AnonW | World | Construction, Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park, Sewers