Civil Engineering heritage: Scotland - Lowlands and Borders
Date 2007
Event ID 589984
Category Descriptive Accounts
Type Publication Account
Permalink http://canmore.org.uk/event/589984
Firth Viaduct, Auchendinny is a ten-arch masonry viaduct crossing the Esk on a curve at a height of 66 ft was built in 1872 by the North British Railway on its Penicuik Branch. The arches are all of 35 ft span and semicircular with brick arch-rings similar to those introduced by Miller 25 years earlier. A curious feature of the viaduct is that the three piers in the river are on the skew, lining in with the direction of flow. This means that there are two skew spans over the river; two hybrid half-skew and half-square spans; and, all others, square spans. The hybrid spans are of unusual arch-ring brick construction in that one elevation of the arch is longer than the corresponding elevation on the other side because of the arch geometry. The viaduct was
designed by the company’s consulting engineer, Thomas Bouch.
R Paxton and J Shipway 2007
Reproduced from 'Civil Engineering heritage: Scotland - Lowlands and Borders' with kind permission of Thomas Telford Publishers.
