Spectacular Socogetra work at Braine-le-Comte station

It’s clear to anyone passing by the station at Braine-le-Comte that work is powering ahead, both inside and out. From improving the building’s insulation to restoring the façades, there are plenty of challenges here – but it’s not those we’re interested in.

The most impressive part of the work is outside the station, where 12,000 m² of parking is under construction, and a tunnel under the railway lines is being lengthened and widened. That’s where our colleagues at Socogetra come in.

The tunnel under the railway is important because, when the new car park is finished, it will link two key parts of town on either side of the tracks.

If you thought that a tunnel under the railway would be dug the same way you would tunnel through a sandcastle on the beach, think again. In this case, our colleagues at Socogetra built the tunnel on a nearby site, and will then insert it underneath the railway lines!

Imagine, if you will, a huge reinforced concrete monolith, 38 m long by 7.2 m wide and 4 m tall. This is the 1,200-tonne behemoth which was ‘simply’ and successfully pushed towards the tracks on Tuesday.

You can see how it was done in this 30-second time-lapse video. The 30 seconds represent some six hours in real time, working with pinpoint accuracy following a month of preparation.

“It looks so simple on the video, speeded up” says Raymond Arnould, Head of Construction and Civil Engineering Operations at Socogetra. “Those hours where the work went smoothly are the result of several weeks of intensive preparations. We tried to predict even the smallest things that might go wrong. Preparation is the real key to success with these operations. On D-day, everyone is calm. It’s beforehand and during the preparations that we are under pressure to think of everything.”

Relations with the client, SNCB, are excellent. “At the start of the project, we offered the client a technical variation to make things less complicated, so it is easier to use the network in future. The client was thrilled with the value engineering we offered. To cap it all, we had estimated 17 days’ shutdown to push through the tunnel under the tracks, and in fact we hope to be back up and running after only 10 days due to the technical variation and the advance preparation we did. ”

Now that this phase of the project is over, our teams can focus on building the new 500-space car park. Work began on 20 March and is due to take 300 working days, at a cost of 4 million euros.