Parkes Railway Yard

The Challenge:

In the Central West region of NSW, Hanlons were engaged by Lycopodium to provide a boundary and detail survey on the Parkes Railway Yard.

The consulting engineers at Lycopodium required ground information that would enable a drainage design to be carried out to avoid flooding of the yard during major storm events. Having previously worked on the Parkes Railway Yard, Hanlons were familiar with the project and their ability to deliver was known.

The Solution:

The Hanlons team collected data on the position and elevation of existing yard features, including ground heights, rail lines, sheds, signals, buried cables and access tracks.

Property boundaries of the railway yard were also determined, which posed some difficulty as sections of the yard were originally surveyed in the 1890s. It was found that the fenced area contained crown land, and there were discrepancies in the location of part of the southern boundary of the yard.

A team of four surveyors liaised with the client and worked on site across four days, each with a specific task to complete. While one surveyor worked on the underground cable locator, locating ground features and buildings, another would search for boundary marks. The other two surveyors were focused on locating railway tracks.

The extent of the site was determined by aerial photography in the planning stage of the project. Hanlons’ previous experience on the site working on turnout and level crossing upgrade projects also helped with planning, as well as information contained in property records, previous surveys and original railway plans obtained from NSW Land Register Services and Transport for NSW.

Four Leica GPS units and one total station were used in the surveying process. We provided the client with a survey in Map Grid of Australia 1994 Geodetic Datum coordinates with elevations to the Australian Height Datum. To achieve this, Hanlons connected to State Survey Marks and adopted the published coordinates. Work on the Parkes Railway Yard continues a run of many projects located in and around Parkes that Hanlons are proud to be part of.