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Project Evergreen

Project Evergreen is an alliance between five different organisations that joined together to deliver
a scheme to double track the railway between Aynho Junction and Bicester North on the Chiltern
Railway Line.

The scope of the work included provision of new crossings and signals, duelling of the existing sin-
gle line track therefore increasing the speed on the Down Line to 100 mph and 90 mph on the Up
Line, improvement in track quality to suit revised line speeds, reduce the Headway Signalling
Times, to maximise availability of the infrastructure and provide operational resilience.

By complying and achieving to the scope of the work it will increase capacity through more fre-
quent services, allow faster journeys, improved journey time and enable safety to be further im-
proved.

The project was valued at £60m and was an alliance
between Railtrack, Chiltern Railways, GTRM, Westing-
house and Birse. Birse were responsible for the Civil
and Embankment Improvement Work part of the con-
tract.

This work required them to remove part of the existing
embankments, provide retaining walls and safe cess
and areas construction of new bridges.

The retaining walls were designed to be constructed
by means of ground anchors mesh reinforcement and
sprayed applied fast setting high early strength concrete. Thyssen Technical Services division who
due to their technical capabilities and many years experience within the mining and tunnelling in-
dustries carrying out similar types of work were the appointed contractors for this work.

Mr John Shone of Thyssen Technical Services carried out field trials to ascertain which sprayed shot-
crete would satisfy the client’s requirements. Following these trials it was decided that Natural Ce-
ment Distribution Ltd. SHOTCRETE 530 and 513 would be the ideal materials.

The decision to use Natural Cement Distribution Ltd SHOTCRETE 530 and 513 was based on the
speed of set, high early strength gain, lack of rebound, ability to work in adverse conditions, water-
proofing characteristics, corrosion resistant and that there is a total lack of additives within the
products, making the products very environmentally friendly.

Thyssen successfully used over 300 tonnes of Natural Cement SHOTCRETE on the scheme.
Natural Cement Distribution Ltd again proved that their material, when applied by experienced CITB
trained applicators, can and does save time and money and that it can be applied using all types of dry
spray equipment.