The train station that will link DFW Airport's Skylink people mover to its future Terminal F now has its full frame in place: crews have hoisted the last of six prefabricated modules onto the existing Skylink guideway, the airport announced Tuesday.
Rather than building the station piece by piece on the elevated track, contractors put each module together on the ground and then raised it into its final spot, according to the airport. The pieces weighed from 210 to 310 tons apiece. The airport compared the heaviest one to a fully loaded Boeing 777.
An overnight operation
The job called for a heavy-lift crawler crane that came to the site on about 60 trucks and took close to two weeks to put together before the first lift, the release said. Each module went up overnight, and each lift took roughly eight hours of careful positioning so the new station would line up with the Skylink system already in service.
Airport officials said the modular method kept disruption to airport operations low and spared riders the longer Skylink shutdowns that conventional construction would have needed.
Work now shifts to tying the six modules together structurally and building them out into a finished station.
