The Timber Viaduct from Cooper’s Bridge (on the South-Eastern Railway). Source: Illustrated London News 17 (4 May 1844): 285. As the article points out, like another “timber-work structure” on the line (Roll's Bridge), this mile-long viaduct is “built in tbe American manner in which a certain rude elegance is attained at small coat. This viaduct, the work of Messrs. Grissell and Peto combines great lightness of appearance and economy of materials with prodigious strength, at a tithe of tbe cost of an embankment, or brickwork arcade. Tbe whole of this remarkable structure has been subjected to Payne's anti dry-rot process, by which it is protected not only from vegetable decomposition, but from any contingencies of fire, to which it might be subjected from the falling on it of ignited coals from the engines, as they traverse its surface.” In fact, such timber trestles, which are very typical of nineteenth-century American railroading, are unusual in Great Britain. [Click on image to enlarge it.]
Related material
- The New Bricklayers’s Arms Terminus
- The Framework of the Viaduct
- First Folkstone Train Passing the Blechingley Tunnel
- British Railways compared to American Railroads — Two nations separated by a common ocean and a common language
You may use this image without prior permission for any scholarly or educational purpose as long as you (1) credit the Hathi Trust Digital Library and The University of Michigan Library and (2) link your document to this URL in a web document or cite the Victorian Web in a print one.
Last modified 4 December 2015