Solway Firth Viaduct

1869. Viaduct over the Solway Firth.

The Solway Junction Railway was built by an independent railway company to shorten the route from ironstone mines in Cumberland to ironworks in Lanarkshire and Ayrshire.

James Brunlees was the engineer of the railway. The superintendent for the viaduct was A. McKenon, and the contractor were Waring Bros and Eckersley.

The viaduct was 1940 yards (1 mile 8 chains, 1.8 km) long, crossing the Solway Firth between Bowness-on-Solway (Cumbria) and Annan (Dumfries & Galloway). It had 193 lattice girder spans of 30 ft, requiring 2,892 tons of cast iron and 1,807 tons of wrought iron. Every 5th (16th?) pier had a double set of iron columns. The cast iron was 'best light grey metal' mixed with scrap iron so as the satisfy the specified bending test requirement (a 1" square bar on supports 54" apart was to bear not less than 700 lbs).

The rails were 35 ft above low water, and the tidal range was 20ft.

Construction started in October 1865, and was completed in October 1868.

The first passenger train over the line (28 July 1870) was a 'special' from Aspatria to an agricultural show at Dumfries. A regular passenger service between Kirtlebridge and Brayton began on 8 August 1870. The station at Abbey Junction opened 31 August 1870

Each pier comprised cast iron columns of hollow cylindrical section, 12 inches diameter, and 9 ft long, with wrought iron tie bars bolted to the columns via fasteners which bolt the column flanges together. The outer columns were raked, acting as buttresses to the inner load-bearing columns.

The columns were founded on iron tubular piles. The piles were intended to be screwed into the ground, but after many failed attempts it was decided to refect the screws and replace them with chilled cast iron points and driven the piles in using Sissons and White's steam pile drive with a 25 cwt monkey with a 5 ft drop, working at 12 - 15 strokes per minute. The piles were driven easily to a depth of 17 - 18 ft, but 6 - 10 blows were required for the final inch. The ground was boulder gravel covered by sand.

The Board of Trade required a 50-foot opening span to allow the passage of vessels, but Parliament was persuaded that traffic on the Firth was insignificant in comparison to the projected traffic over the viaduct, so the viaduct was built without provision for ships to pass through it, ending any commercial use of the harbour at Port Carlisle.

It was wide enough to take double track, but only single-track was laid. The greatest engineering difficulty on the line turned out not to be the construction of the viaduct, but the mile and a quarter section of line over Bowness Moss on the Cumberland side.

In the winter of 1874-5 longitudinal cracks appeared in a few columns, due to water entering and freezing. To prevent any repetition, half-inch holes were drilled just above the high-water mark.

In January 1881 sheets of ice up to 6" thick inches formed; fragments of these sheets rode over each other and froze together, leading to the formation of blocks of ice up to six feet. Rakers and load-bearing columns were damaged by the ice floes on the ebb tide. In some places where piers were completely swept away the spans remained in position, but there were two complete gaps in the bridge where piers, girders, plates and railway had completely disappeared.

Reconstruction of the viaduct began in summer 1882, and by August 1883 the work was sufficiently advanced that construction traffic was run over it. Passenger services over the line resumed on 1 May 1884.

Despite serious concerns about the deterioration by corrosion, the viaduct saw increased use in WW1 for iron-ore and pig-iron traffic from West Cumbria to Scotland. The creation of a large munition works at Eastriggs, to the east of Annan, gave the line additional traffic.

The line was closed in 1921.

In 1933 arrangements were made to demolish it. Arnott, Young and Company purchased the bridge and dismantled it, work being completed by November 1935. The section of railway between the south end of the viaduct and Kirkbride Junction was dismantled as part of the process.

The section of line between Abbey Junction and Brayton continued in use until 1933.

The above information is largely condensed from the excellent Wikipedia entry and from The Engineer

Today only the shore embankments remain, together with the remains of iron piers on the Cumbrian side. The shore embankments on the north shore is 154 yards long, and 440 yds on the south side. They are made of clay and faced with large sandstone blocks 15-18" thick.

See Also

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Sources of Information

• Wikipedia