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Civil Engineering heritage: Scotland - Highlands and Islands

Date 2007

Event ID 930364

Category Descriptive Accounts

Type Publication Account

Permalink http://canmore.org.uk/event/930364

Culloden Moor or Clava Viaduct

(Institute Civil Engineers Historic Engineering Works no. HEW 0601/03)

This gracefully curved viaduct with 29 semicircular arches over the valley of the Nairn, east of Culloden battlefield, 1785 ft long and 132 ft high at the river, is constructed of red sandstone and carries a single line of the former Highland Railway. It is asymmetrical with a river arch of 100 ft span,ten arches of 50 ft span at the north side and a further 18 of 50 ft span at the south side and is sometimes dubbed ‘the Forth bridge in stone’.

The piers, apart from at the river span, taper from 5 ft thick at the base to 612 ft at the spring line of the semicircular arches. Unusually there are no massive intermediate piers to prevent progressive collapse. The viaduct, the longest in Scotland, was completed in 1898 to a design by Murdoch Paterson. The contractors were Charles Brand & Sons, Glasgow.

R Paxton and J Shipway, 2007.

Reproduced from 'Civil Engineering heritage: Scotland - Highlands and Islands' with kind permission from Thomas Telford Publishers.

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