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Tuesday 5 Jul 2005

WORK CONTINUES ON AWARD-NOMINATED VIADUCT

Region & Route:

Work to resume the refurbishment of the railway viaduct that carries the freight line between Oakham and Kettering over the River Welland close to the village of Harringworth is due to start next week (11 July). The second phase of the £1.5 million project will continue throughout the summer and a third phase will start in 2006. Straddling the Welland Valley, the 126 year old viaduct stands 57 ft tall and each of its arches has a 40 ft span, making the entire monument to London & Midland Railway engineering excellence over three quarters of a mile long. Its sheer size and exposed site make it inappropriate to work on during the winter months. Due to its height and inaccessibility, a complicated web of scaffolding will have to be built, similar to that which was used last year and which was a feature of the work being entered in the annual Institution of Civil Engineers West Midlands Awards. The latest work will see a detailed inspection and structural evaluation of arches 57 to 63 of the 82-span structure. Depending on the outcome of the inspection, work is likely to include repairs to spalling (flaking) bricks and cracks in the arches, replacement of lost mortar and the rebuilding of parapet walls that have distorted, most of which have been caused by such things as water and frost getting into the brickwork. As a listed structure, the size and features of the original bricks have to be replicated. The viaduct is believed to contain over 20 million bricks and when work started on building it in 1874, brickworks were set up at either end to manufacture the bricks from local clay. Around 2,500 men were employed during its construction and it eventually opened to mineral trains in 1879 and passenger trains the following year.