Information about the Inner City Tunnel Duplication

[Gazza]

Just wondering, has anybody got any info on the newest tunnel from RS to FV? I remember someone saying they happened around 1997....They are a pretty major undertaking anyway, any construction pics, media releases etc...How much did it cost?
How on earth did the network run with everything funneling into a single track pair beforehand anyway?

[ozbob]

I took my daughters to the tunnel walk through on the weekend before services commenced using.  Might have something somewhere ..

The opening of the tunnels was the catalyst for the last big timetable change, until June 2011.  

http://www.queenslandrail.com.au/Community/Pages/HistoryMilestones.aspx  has it opening 1996

[ozbob]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Central_railway_station,_Brisbane

[ozbob]

Some more info here!

Item 24, this should give some leads ..

[brad C]

The tunnels were constructed in 2 stages (Central - Brunswick St) and (Central to Roma St), the latter culminating in the redeveloped 10 platform station.
Upon completion, new timetables were introduced and with it saw the demise of the Cleveland - Caboolture and Shorncliffe - Ipswich pairing (intoduced with the basket case timetable of Sept 93) and a re-instatement of Cab-Ipswich and Shorcliffe to Roma St/Corinda and the introduction of half hourly week end services.
Also with the opening came the commissioning of platforms 3 and 4 at Bowen Hills, which was previously bypassed by the northern relief road, and of course quad from BH-BSt.
Although it was not until late 1999 that the quad to Northgate was completed.
At Christmas time 1996, all inner city trains were suspended for 4 days to install a completely new series of cross overs  at the northern end of Bowen Hills, which meant trains from the up suburban and up FG could cross to the up main and trains from the down main could cross to the down suburbans and the down FG.
There was also a later major week end closure in 1997 when the quad was linked up to the tunnels on the southern side of Brunswick St and the former cross over from the down sub to the northern relief was eliminated.
Hope this little bit of history helps.

[HappyTrainGuy]

The network managed to coped because everything had their place prior to Bowen Hills and the Central-Roma Street platform layout. I can't remember the starting dates but it was around 1991-92 they started working on the overall project. The reason it took about 6-7 years to fully get up and running was due to the massive scale of the project. Works included earthworks at the old Roma Street Yard, re aligning the Normanby enterance, Roma Street had every single platform rebuilt (besides the long distance/interstate lines at the time - Where you stand today to board Gold Coast/Beenleigh/Cleveland trains used to be the old railway tracks. The old platform still remains but is unused). Central had additional earthworks done to renforce the extra weight above it. Brunswick Street had additional support works done aswell along with signal upgrades.

[Golliwog]

Sorry I can be of more use, but I do remember seeing some drawings in the database at QRN which were all related to this. Not sure if they were the final ones as the database was, as I understood from my short time there, fairly new and being updated relatively frequently, and in other places there were duplicates and older editions in there. But IIRC they did agree with the split of the work mentioned here.

Semi-related, but does anyone know when the Mincom building was built (the one next to Central and above the Central-Roma St tunnels)? There were a few drawings I saw in passing that were suggesting works in the tunnels to allow the building, but I'm not sure if it was concurrent with the new tunnels being built, or more recent.

[Jonno]

Mincom was built over the tracks which were in the open air.  I am sure there was a lot more to it than that but Mincom created the tunnel underneath it.