Drivers planning to travel on the M6 this weekend are warned that their journeys may be disrupted due to a wide load.
The wide load – a huge electricity transformer – will be transported from the port at Heysham in Lancashire at around 9am on Saturday.
Its journey will end at a holding site at Longtown, north of Carlisle and the trip is expected to take around 12 hours.
The load, more than six metres wide and weighing 450 tonnes, will travel north up the M6 from junction 34 near Lancaster straddling two lanes of the carriageway.
It will then move into Scotland up the A74 where it will turn and head south – rejoining the M6 and then leaving the southbound carriageway at junction 45.
Once in Cumbria, the vehicle will park on a closed lane of the northbound exit slip road at junction 39 for a planned break before resuming its journey.
The load will exit the southbound M6 motorway at junction 45 – reversing up the entry slip road ahead of the final leg of its journey to Longtown.
The load will be moving at around 12mph along the M6 and drivers are being asked to exercise extra patience and care when overtaking in lane three of the motorway.
Drivers may be stopped temporarily at locations around junction 45 when the load is leaving the motorway.
The transformer is helping the transition to greener energy by supporting wind power generation in southern Scotland by the region’s infrastructure company SP Energy Networks.
National Highways’ abnormal loads manager Gordon Beattie said: “This is an unusually wide abnormal loads movement but we’ve been liaising with the police as well as the authorities in Scotland to keep any disruption to other drivers’ journeys to a minimum.”
Drivers are advised to check traffic conditions before setting out on journeys.
