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Publication Account

Event ID 881771

Category Descriptive Accounts

Type Publication Account

Permalink http://canmore.org.uk/event/881771

The Killin Railway joining Loch Tay to the Callander & Oban Railway at Killin Junction was built from 1883–85 and is now disused and walkable. It crossed the Dochart on this 458 skew, mass concrete and masonry viaduct. The piers, spandrels and parapets are of masonry and the arch-rings of concrete. Completed in 1885, the structure has a claim to be Scotland’s earliest concrete viaduct. Its

five mass concrete arches, which are 2 ft thick, span 30 ft on the square and 42 ft 5 in. on the skew.

The arches were each built in a day, their 2 ft thickness being built up in 6 in. layers. The Board of Trade inspector asked for a core to be cut from one of the rings as proof of its homogeneity. A masonry arch of this thickness would

normally have taken about 20 minutes to core but, in this time, much to the contractor’s satisfaction, the core had penetrated only 7 in. The concrete is a 1 to 5 mix of cement and crushed rock. The engineer was John Strain and the contractor, John Best (MacDonald of Skye, the original contractor for line, went bankrupt before the viaduct was completed).

R Paxton and J Shipway 2007b

Reproduced from 'Civil Engineering heritage: Scotland - Lowlands and Borders' with kind permission of Thomas Telford Publishers.

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