Orbital rail from the harbour edge to the northern hinterland
The line has to do three things that fight each other. It has to cross a working harbour without stopping the ships. It has to serve four neighbourhoods with no room for a surface route. And it has to stay inside a budget that quietly assumed the ground was flat. It was not flat. The first eleven months were survey.
Every station is drawn twice: once as it sits in the ground, and once as it has to feel from a moving train. The second drawing is the one that decides whether people get off at the right place. Where the two disagreed, we moved the platform.
Pier 6 crossing
Problem
The only line wide enough for the orbital alignment ran straight through a working shipyard, whose cranes were contractually protected until 2031.
Drawing
We moved the alignment 400 m inland and took the gradient up to 3.1%, which put the level crossing elimination out of scope and saved the pier its cranes.
Northern interchange
Problem
Four neighbourhoods, four existing bus corridors and one station box, with a live freight line underneath that could not be closed for more than nine hours.
Drawing
The box was built as a single sprayed structure in four 52-hour possessions, and the interchange was laid out around the freight envelope rather than fighting it for space.