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Publication Account

Date 1986

Event ID 1017787

Category Descriptive Accounts

Type Publication Account

Permalink http://canmore.org.uk/event/1017787

This wooden trestle bridge carries the single-track Aviemore-Inverness railway line across the AlIt Creag Bheithen just N of the former station at Moy. This line was opened by the Highland Railway Company in 1897, and the bridge is now the only surviving structure of its type on a main-line railway in Scotland, possibly in Britain.

The bridge is 132ft 7 in (40.41m) in length by 28ft 6in (8.69m) in width with raking shores spreading the width to 60ft (18.29m) overall. There are five spans, varying between 24ft 4in (7.42m) and 25ft lin (7.65m) in length centre to centre, and the decking stands 27 ft 9 in (8·46 m) above the normal water-line of the burn.

Compared with the elaborate structures of this kind erected by I K Brunel in England, and those on North American railroads, this bridge is of modest trestle frame and multiple prop-and-beam construction, employing heavy pitch-pine baulks with iron-clad joints. The sectional corrugated-iron deck is carried on a series of six longitudinal girders, each made up of coupled baulks mounted one on top of the other. There are six trestle bents, the two end ones being set within the embankments. Each of the four central frames is composed of six upright posts driven into the ground like piles and joined together by runners, beam-stiffeners and, at the head, a transverse beam. The main structural components are braced laterally by raking shores, and longitudinally by an elaborate system of raking struts associated with the main girders and a lower straining-beam.

Information from ‘Monuments of Industry: An Illustrated Historical Record’ (1986).

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