Not since Captain Kirk uttered his famous line have we been this excited about beams!

Over the weekend the largest pre-cast concrete tee-roff bridge beams ever built in Australia were installed for the new Ranford Road Bridge.

Tee-roff beams enable the construction of stronger bridges with longer spans, using less material while also reducing overall bridge load.

Each of the beams weighs 197 tonnes (the equivalent of 145 Toyota Corollas!) and takes 10 workers and two concrete pump trucks three days to manufacture.

Ten 50-metre beams are needed for the new bridge. The beams were manufactured by local company, the Georgiou Group, at its precast yard in Hazelmere.

The new bridge will be longer and higher to future-proof the rail corridor and will have six general traffic lanes (three in each direction), bus lanes and a shared path on each side.

When the 17.5km Thornlie-Cockburn Link is complete, passengers using Ranford Road Station can travel to Perth in about 29 minutes.

The first trains are expected to run on the Thornlie-Cockburn Link in 2023.