Pricing Change
New pricing for orders of material from this site will come into place shortly. Charges for supply of digital images, digitisation on demand, prints and licensing will be altered.
Civil Engineering heritage: Scotland - Lowlands and Borders
Date 2007
Event ID 606549
Category Descriptive Accounts
Type Publication Account
Permalink http://canmore.org.uk/event/606549
The first viaduct on this site, carrying the Dundee & Perth Railway across the Tay, was of bulky timber segmental arches on stone piers erected in 1849. It was replaced by the present iron and masonry viaduct opened in May 1864, designed by B. H. Blyth [1819-1866] and erected by Lee & Freeman at a cost of about £27 000. Both bridges incorporated an opening swing-span near the west bank of the river, but in the present bridge it has since been replaced with a fixed span.
The viaduct has an overall length of about 1300 ft and is curved in plan to a radius of 15 chains (990 ft). Its middle section on Moncreiffe Island has ten masonry arches, each of 28 ft 4 in. clear span, carried on 4 ft wide piers. The adjacent sections comprising iron plate-girders spanning about 82 ft are carried on twin 712
ft diameter masonry piers. The piers are founded on cast-iron caissons filled with concrete. The east section has seven spans and the west section five spans. There is a public footpath along the full length of the bridge on the north side carried on cantilevered cross beams.
R Paxton and J Shipway
Reproduced from 'Civil Engineering heritage: Scotland - Lowlands and Borders' with kind permission of Thomas Telford Publishers.
