HS1 – London to the Channel Tunnel

The challenge

SYSTRA was a founder partner of the London & Continental Railway (LCR) concession that built the £5.2bn railway and was partner in the Rail Link Engineering (RLE) consortium that was entrusted the project design and engineering. Within the RLE consortium SYSTRA provided the experience of high speed railway.

SYSTRA led the design and construction of engineering structures, track and catenary, signalling, control-command and power supply. We also had overall supervision of the construction phase, design and implementation of the test programme, acceptance and commissioning and the preparation of the maintenance programme.

SYSTRA’s work on bridges was particularly notable for designing structures that could handle the impact of high speed running, in particular their dynamic behaviour under the weight of trains travelling at 300km/h. Most significant was the 1.2km Medway Bridge – its 152.4m long central span was a world record for a railway bridge. SYSTRA worked with the contractor to finalise construction drawings after producing the static calculations for the whole structure, analysing rail/structure interactions and checking rail joints and their adjustment.

We also took responsibility for conceptual and construction design for the several kilometres of piled slab foundations that carry the railway over the Thames Marshes near Rainham in Essex.

A quarter of HS1’s route lies underground, including the 3.2km North Downs Tunnel, a 3km tunnel under the River Thames and 19km underground from Dagenham in East London to central London.

Around 250 SYSTRA engineers were involved in the project, integrated into RLE teams for project design and management, or within the building contractors working on track laying, catenary construction and signalling.