Satellite
Show on map
  • Day 90

    Gundagai Historic Rail Bridge.

    May 19, 2023 in Australia ⋅ ☀️ 13 °C

    The old railway bridge was built over a hundred years ago, out of wood. It has detiorated to the point where it is in danger of shedding random bits.

    It would be wonderful to be able to preserve it but that might be impossibly exprnsive.

    From the info sign.
    The Rail Viaduct (1903)

    The rail viaduct across the Murrumbidgee floodplam is 819 metres long and is the longest timber truss structure ever built in Australia. The viaduct was constructed in 1993 when the branch railway line from Cootamundra to Gundagai

    was extended to Tumut Seventy-two timber trusses carry the single rail line over the floodplan to the steel rail bridge over the main channel of the river

    The construction of the viaduct and bridge was a major enigneering undertaking for the time, with the cost of building then accounting for seventeen per cent

    of the total cost of the line to Timut. The rulway line over the viduct and bridge operated for over eighty yeurs until the Tumut rail service was discontinued in 1984.

    Prince Alfred Viaduct (1896-1898)

    The Prince Alfred Bridge rood viaduct is the fourth longest timber girder structure ever built in Australia, bur now the only one that retains its nineteenth century form and length. After major floods in the 1950's, the Prince Alfred Bridge and viaduct were built over the Murrumbidgee floodplain to ensure that floods at Gundagat did not cut off road communication between Sydney and Melbourne The viaduct was constructed on its current alignment in 1896-98, replacing an earlier structure built in the 1860's. Its seventy-six timber trestles carried Traffic on the highway linking Sydney and Melbourne for eighty years until 1977 when the Sheahan Bridge was built across the Murrumbidgee just over a kilometre downstream..
    Read more