Moving the City of Birmingham:
The streets of central Birmingham will be closed to traffic on Sat 2nd December as the historic steam locomotive, The City of Birmingham, and its tender, are moved by lowloaders to a new home in the 115 million Discovery Centre, Millennium Point. Buro Happold and Fraser Randal Exhibitions, working together as BHFR, for the Construction Management of the fitout to the Discovery Centre and relocation of exhibits from the old Museum of Science and Industry, have been key to the organisation of the movement of the steam train.
"Co-ordinating the contracts to move the steam train has been a novel experience", comments Ian Williams of Buro Happold Project Management. "On Saturday, streets through the City centre will be partially closed, to allow first the locomotive, and then its tender, to be moved." The front of the old Museum of Science and Industry (MSI) will be taken down to allow the City of Birmingham to be winched onto a sophisticated multi wheel hydraulic trailer. The 2 mile journey will take upto 1 hour, with the train escorted by police, and the same process will then be repeated for the tender.
"Once the train and tender have been winched from their current position in the MSI, the tracks they have sat on since 1971, when the Locomotive Hall was built around it, will be removed for re installation at the Discovery Centre on Sunday morning." Explains Simon Fraser of Fraser Randell. " The Loco and its tender will sit outside the Discovery Centre on Saturday night. Following a short ceremony attended by local dignitaries including the Mayor of Birmingham on Sunday morning, The rails will be installed, followed by the placing of the train and tender into their new positions."
The locomotive hall at the Museum of Science and Industry was built around the City of Birmingham in 1971. Built in 1939, the train was officially named at New Street Station in March 1945, and was finally withdrawn from service in 1964 after covering 1,650,000 miles. A prime example of its class, the City of Birmingham is one of the most powerful class of passenger steam engines to be built. The train weighs 97 tons empty, and 108 tons when full. The tender weighs 29 tons empty and 56 tons when full.
Other national exhibits installed at the new Discovery Centre complex include a Hurricane and a Spitfire, as well as the oldest working steam engine in the world, the Smethwick, which was built by James Watt and the world land speed breaking Railton.
The Discovery Centre forms the exciting focal point of the £111.6m millennial Landmark project, Millennium Point, designed by architects Nicholas Grimshaw and Partners. Millennium Point includes The Discovery Centre, a stimulating educational visitor experience; The University of the First Age; The Technology Innovation Centre, a national centre of excellence for technology and innovation for the University of Central England; and The Hub, a place for entertainment and fun.
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Buro Happold is a multi-disciplinary international practice of consulting engineers established in 1976 offering civil and structural engineering, mechanical and electrical engineering, quantity surveying, building services and environmental engineering, infrastructure and traffic engineering, geotechnical engineering, façade engineering, fire engineering, Computational Fluid Dynamics analysis, access consultancy, project management, urban design and a range of specialist CAD services.
