Another Historic Railways Estate bridge shot blasting project carried out for Hammond (ECS) carrying out the expert refurbishment of Cottage Access Bridge in Wrexham, Wales.
As with all bridge shot blasting projects of this ilk, our primary task is to safely extract samples of the existing coating to send to the laboratory for lead content testing. Old steel structures like this bridge were originally painted with lead-based coatings because lead compounds offered unmatched protection, durability, and corrosion resistance compared to other paint products available at the time. Today, paint coating technology has far surpassed that, as well as being made up of safe compounds.
When the results of the samples were returned, determining the exact lead content levels we were dealing with, we could begin to safely remove the old coating in our strenuously tested and controlled works order via methods of shot blasting. As the historic bridge was fully enclosed and restricted from public access, we arrived with one of our mobile decontamination units and our fully lead trained shot blasting team on site to begin to shot blast the old coating from the steel structure and clean the metal to a surface we could repaint.
Once cleaned and profiled, we then apply the weatherproof coatings system to the steel structure of the bridge. For this bridge restoration project, as with most Historic Railways projects, we applied our signature multi-stage 2K Epoxy-Hybrid system which offers up to 30-years before first maintenance. This is a very popular protective system for use on steel structures in marine applications, which particularly helps those exposed to weather conditions such as rural bridge structures like this. The final decorative finish is a strong, weather resistant Satin Black as requested by Historic Railways.
