Amtrak rides the Superior Scaffold rails around the entire building
Superior Scaffold is proud to be providing scaffolding support for Amtrak’s renovation of their 30th St. Station in downtown Philadelphia. The historic building that opened in 1933 will get a much needed facelift. It’s an incredible looking structure and can you just imagine what it’s going to be like when it’s finished? Wow…
Amtrak wants to make the neoclassical 30th Street Station a more welcoming gateway to West Philadelphia and Center City. The 30th Street Station handles 120 Amtrak trains, 960 SEPTA trains, and 26 NJ Transit trains each weekday. More than four million Amtrak passengers went through the station last year.
Superior’s first order of business was to erect canopies and sidewalk protection around the entire building – and that’s a good sized building. The station is a hustling, bustling metropolis all of its own with cars, buses, and lots of people all the time. Those are just some of the challenges faced when erecting scaffolding around a busy building like this. For that reason, most of the work was done at night as pedestrian and vehicle traffic was diminished.
I love this part of the description because we actually get to see BEFORE and AFTER shots of the scaffolding (something we don’t always get). But this gives you an insider’s look at just what goes into scaffolding an historic building like this. It also lets us see some the challenges crews face.
The jersey barriers on each side were quite the problem. Superior had to scaffold around all the physical obstacles, lamp posts, bollards, parking meters, taxi cabs, pedestrians.
All of 30th Street Station is hollow underneath so Amtrak required Superior to build canopies on top of barriers to distribute weight load.
This was done so scaffolding can be installed on top of the canopy to do facade restoration.
Amtrak even specified the type and color of paint…a beautiful soft green. Customizing the look and color of a canopy is an option that many of our clients choose.
This is going to be an 8 – 10 year project.
Superior had to construct overhead protection at different elevations for buses, cars and pedestrians.
The biggest challenge was finding jersey barriers with one flat side as Amtrak mandated.
Fortunately Rob Buckley from Buckley Construction had what the doctor ordered. 177 – 12′ barriers.
Next challenge was setting them in place. We used a lull and a unique clamp made just for lifting the barriers.
We also had to cut many of them to fit into Amtrak’s layout (parking meters, doors, etc.) It’s not easy cutting concrete barriers!
Some shots to give you an idea of the scope of work with the canopies and overhead protection.
Some of the detailed work that goes into doing an extensive job like this.
These structures are just the first phase in an extensive renovation. They have to be strong enough to support additional scaffoling when they start renovating the facade of the building.
Superior provides scaffolding for renovations, inspections, new construction – just about any type of project.
Give us a call today at (215) 743-2200 or visit www.superiorscaffold.com for more information.