If you could fly over the Yanchep Rail Extension you would see the station and bridges begin to take shape at both ends of the project.

The future Alkimos Station site has been transformed – over the last six months the soil has been excavated to the future train track level, creating a clear station outline.

The first major concrete pour in March, saw more than 300m3 of concrete poured in seven hours.

The next stage of work for Alkimos Station includes constructing retaining walls and bridge works, which are now one step closer with the arrival of a 100-tonne piling rig.

The powerful BG33 rig will first install a series of test piles to strengthen the integrity of the foundations at multiple locations, including future bridge sites between Butler and Yanchep.

Project Manager Stephen Nicolay said as these piles will form the bridge and retaining wall foundations, the test piling is an important part of the construction process.

“The test piles will be built by drilling a hole into the earth, inserting a reinforced cage into the hole and then filling it with concrete,” Stephen said.

“During testing we will drill two or three piles a day around Alkimos and Yanchep. Eventually, more than 500 permanent piles will be required for the bridges alone.”

Meanwhile, at the northern end of the project site a new road deviation on Yanchep Beach Road was seamlessly introduced by our construction crews and traffic managers in April.

The new deviation between Spinnaker Boulevard and Booderee Road has freed up the space to build the new road-over-rail bridge. Once the bridge is built, traffic will be diverted back, with the rail tracks passing underneath. As part of the deviation works, a new footpath was also built on the southern side of the new alignment.