Heavy construction is well underway on RTD FasTracks’ first new rail corridor, the West Corridor light rail through Denver, Lakewood and Golden. In part two of our three-day video tour of quarterly construction progress and near-term look-ahead, Inside Lane accompanies Joe Van Aelstyn, the area engineer for Denver Transit Construction Group in charge of work on the segment from Sheridan Boulevard to the Denver Federal Center in Lakewood.

Van Aelstyn explains some of the drainage work that must be done first, especially the 2,000-foot undergrounding of Dry Gulch from Richey Park at 13th Avenue and Carr Street down to 13th and Zephyr, along the track alignment.

He also explains the Wadsworth Bridge construction and how it will have the passenger boarding station platform in the air over Wadsworth Boulevard. And he talks about progress on the tied-handle arch bridge that will carry light rail over the Sixth Avenue Freeway at the Federal Center. It will be built by Edward Kraemer & Sons on the ground of the Federal Center, then slowly launched in one piece across the freeway during a weekend closure sometime early next year.

The West Corridor is a 12-mile light rail line divided into three areas by the contractor. Denver Transit Construction Group is a partnership of Herzog Contracting of St. Joseph, Mo., and Stacy and Witbeck Inc. of Alameda, Calif.

Yesterday, we toured Area 3 from downtown Denver to Sheridan Boulevard. The third installment will be from the Federal Center to Golden along the Sixth Avenue Freeway, where a lot of the work is already visible to commuters in the form of bridge construction at Colfax Avenue, Indiana Street and Union Boulevard.

You can watch the video right here at Inside Lane or click on the little box with four arrows at the bottom right of the screen to expand to full-screen mode at Vimeo.