A section of the M53 will be closed this weekend so a huge piece of oil refinery equipment can be transported to its new home.
The enormous metal structure is going to be installed at Essar’s Stanlow oil refinery in Ellesmere Port, Cheshire. Once installed, the module will allow Stanlow to start the UK’s first hydrogen furnace, which will allow it to cut its emissions.
Gargantuan in size, the module is five times taller than a double decker bus — and six times wider than road salt spreaders which are seen in winter. In all, 26.5 metres long, 18.5 metres tall, and 14.2 metres wide — meaning the module will straddle both sides of the motorway during the final three miles of its journey, which started back in Thailand.
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“There are abnormal loads and there are abnormal loads –- and this one will completely fill the motorway,” Gordon Beattie, abnormal loads manager for National Highways North West, said. “The module will be mounted on two wheeled platforms — one on each carriageway — and will look a bit like the bridge of a container ship gliding down the motorway.
“This has been a huge logistical challenge for everyone involved but we’ll be closing the motorway at a time when traffic is at its lightest and a very good diversion will be in place.”
After arriving by ship from Thailand to the Port of Liverpool in June, the module was transferred to a barge for the short trip across the River Mersey, through the locks into the Manchester Ship Canal and onto a holding bay near National Waterways Museum at Ellesmere Port. On Saturday 13 August it will be moved away from the canal a few hundred yards onto the neighbouring M53 via the southbound entry slip road at junction 8.
To facilitate the move, the southbound carriageway of the M53 will be closed between junction 5 at Hooton and junction 10 for Cheshire Oaks from 7pm on Saturday, August 13 until 10am on Sunday, August 14. The northbound carriageway will be closed between junction 10 and junction 8 with the closure time on the Saturday evening after 7pm and subject to an appropriate reduction in traffic levels from Cheshire Oaks.
A diversion using the A550 and A494 trunks will operate between between junction 5 and junction 11 at Stoak Interchange where the M53 meets the M56.
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