Good evening everyone,

Apologies for the delayed look ahead. It appears this didn’t send properly on Friday afternoon – with any luck this one arrives in your inboxes.

There has been a lot of change out on site recently with the site now divided by the new section of southbound lane of St Kilda Road. This has allowed the us to shift our barriers onto what was the previous southbound lane and begin to breakout the old traffic lane to lay new tram tracks and lay the new road alignment adjacent to these tracks. Thankyou to everyone for you patience as we tied in the new section of the road, the significant amount of rain did not help matters, but the new lane is now open and we’re pushing ahead.

Next week will see a number of key activities run up until 10pm – During the week just gone, we wrapped up activities at 8pm, but the weather is not looking kind, and it is more than likely that these will need to continue all the way until 10pm.

Anzac Station entrance construction – Tram Interchange

The footprint of the new tram interchange will begin to expand significantly over the next few weeks as the team begin to pour the concrete foundations of the platform itself. The platform extends from just near the top of Albert Road, all the way down beyond the new kiosk that has been constructed and is now in the process of being fitted out. The team are also getting up underneath the canopy to get some works done on the underside of the canopy, while at ground level, the first sections of glass for the balustrades around the oculus began to be installed this week and will continue into next week.

Next week will also see more progress on the kiosk, with the glass installed for the future kiosk and the installation off some of the cladding around the outside of the kiosk.

Some of these works will continue out to 10pm including works on the underside of the canopy and the installation of the new cladding on the kiosk.

Surface Works

Outside the platform, the new sections of tram tracks continue their progress through site on the eastern side. Now that we’ve taken the old southbound lane of St Kilda Road and made some room on the western side of the canopy, you’ll start to see more tram track work in this section as well as installation of the new tram poles.  We are quickly approaching the deadline of the 27 November, when we switch off the power to the tram lines, buses replace trams and we begin the 24/7 works to break out the existing tracks and realign them to connect in with the new sections of tram alignment around the new platform.  Like this week, next week some activities will extend out to 10pm to ensure we are ready for the 27 November.  The platform and new sections of track need to be ready for this critical date, so over the coming weeks more activities will extend out to 10pm.  Activities you’ll see on site next week are similar to those you’ve seen to date, with excavators doing earthworks, tram track laying, asphalting, concrete pours.

The ventilation shafts will also continue to get some attention next week, the concrete pours continuing for the northern shafts are complete, connecting them to the station roof. We’ll see same at the southern end next week before waterproofing and backfill commences on both.

Station box construction

The big development inside the station box is the start of the construction of the stairs from concourse level down to platform level. The frame for the future pedestrian elevator has also been installed. We’ve included a photo this week on the first section of the formwork for the new stairs.

Shrine Entrance

Next week at the Shrine entrance over near Domain Road will see the start of the steel fixing for the new section of roof. Once the roof is installed, the main excavation down to the future base slab will commence.

Regards, Rob and Christian