A GIGANTIC bridge building machine has been shipped to Widnes to construct the iconic £1.86 billion Mersey Gateway.

Resembling a giant Meccano set, the self-launching movable scaffolding system (MSS) has filled 90 shipping containers.

It will take four months to put together at the Catalyst site.

It will be used to build the elevated road viaducts over the salt marshes on both sides of the Mersey estuary.

When fully assembled, it will measure 157 metres long – the length of one and a half football pitches.

The steel structure will weigh 1,500 tonnes, the equivalent of 124 double decker buses.

Halton Council leader Rob Polhill, chairman of the Mersey Gateway Crossings Board, said: “This is an exciting time for Halton.

“We are another step closer to getting our new bridge and all of the economic, social and environmental benefits that it will bring.

“This new machine is going to be quite a spectacle.”

The MSS will start operating in early autumn.

It will act as a giant concrete mould for the roadway of the approach viaducts.

The bright orange machine will be locked onto the bridge piers and concrete will be poured into the mould to cast a deck span.

The equipment will then move along to cast the next span.

This process will be repeated until all eleven bridge piers on the north side have been connected.

It will then be dismantled and moved to Runcorn.

Work will then start on the nine piers of the southern approach.

It will take a few weeks to construct each bridge span.

Around 23,000 cubic metres of concrete will be used to build the 19 spans, enough to fill nine Olympic sized swimming pools.

Engineers at Norweigan company NRS spent six months refining the design and it took five months to be manufactured in China.

Richard Walker, project director of Merseylink said: “Only a handful of companies in the world have the specialist skills to design, manufacture and operate construction equipment of this size and scale.”