Civil Engineering heritage: Scotland - Highlands and Islands

Date 2007

Event ID 962662

Category Descriptive Accounts

Type Publication Account

Permalink http://canmore.org.uk/event/962662

Oykell Viaduct, Invershin

(Institute Civil Engineers Historic Engineering Works no. HEW 2551), NH 5789 9527

Oykell or Shin Viaduct is an outstanding Scottish example of an early wrought-iron lattice girder viaduct. It crosses the Kyle of Sutherland with a single 230 ft span and is flanked by tall semicircular masonry arches, two to the south and three to the north. The masonry is of coursed rubble with dressed stone arch-rings. The engineer was Joseph Mitchell and his partner Murdoch Paterson.

The bridge included the longest of Mitchell’s lattice girder spans, 20 ft longer than that at Dalguise Viaduct four years earlier. Unusually, the deck here is on the top of rather than between the trusses. It joins two stations, Culrain and Invershin which are only a 14 -mile apart. Culrain Station was built specifically to provide local people with a means of crossing the Kyle as the bridge is the only one for several miles in either direction. A plaque at the bridge reads ‘Erected AD1867 by The Sutherland Railway Co. Mainly promoted by George Granville William, The Duke and twenty first Earl of Sutherland’.

R Paxton and J Shipway, 2007.

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