Olympic track ready for athletes

Olympic Stadium from Greenway, October 2011

The track for the Olympic athletes has been engineered for fast running. Work on the track is now finished. A range of large, medium and small companies have been involved in managing all aspects of the project, supplying the expertise and the materials. At the moment the stadium is surrounded by an unfinished landscape. The track will be covered for protection until the rest of the stadium is fitted out.

Glimpse of the running track

The engineering company, Sir Robert McAlpine, had overall responsibility for the main stadium. Their success with the Emirates Stadium helped their bid to succeed. The steel was supplied by Watson Steel of Bolton.  Apparently  some of this steel was reshaped from recycled leftovers from a major gas pipeline project.


The running track has been supplied by the Italian company Mondo. The track is made from vulcanised rubber. Mondo explains that the design of the material has been informed by detailed analysis of the biomechanics of athletes feet as they interact with the track surface. This has to take into account the contrasting needs of sprinters and long-distance runners.


Thanks to the London Marathon Charitable Trust, UK athletes are able to train of the same type of track as that in the Olympic Stadium because identical tracks have been laid in the Lee Valley and in Loughborough at the national performance centres where our athletes train.

Paddington Station

The most recently decorated 'span 4' at Paddington

A trip to Exeter and back this last weekend reminded me that Paddington is one of the pleasanter London station for travellers. This is thanks to brilliant engineering in Victorian times and recent refurbishment  which was initially carried out according to a design by the architect Nicholas Grimshaw. Network Rail publishes a mini-guide to the features of the station.

Polished limestone has brightened the platforms while travellers can wait and shop in the Lawn - an area that was long ago station master's garden.

Paddington was built using the same techniques as the Crystal Palace. It opened in 1854 just three years after the Great Exhibition.

Brunel at Paddington

The statue near the entrance on platform 1 celebrates the engineer, Brunel, who worked with the architects and designers Matthew Digby Wyatt and Owen Jones to create this spectacular station. 

Already much of the redecorated ironwork has been blackened by the soot from the diesel locomotives. However the line of arches in 'span 4' is showing the glory of the colour scheme because it has only recently been unveiled. 

Meanwhile the next engineering challenge is the design and construction of an underground addition to Paddington as part of Crossrail.