Logierait Viaduct - Perth & Kinross, Scotland - Railroad Bridges on Waymarking.com

This viaduct, over the River Tay at Logierait formed part of the branch line from Ballinluig to Aberfeldy. It was part of the Inverness and Perth Junction Railway later renamed the Highland Railway when the company merged with the Inverness and Aberdeen JR in 1865. The section of line from Dunkeld to Pitlochry had opened in June 1863 and the line completed by September that year when the Aviemore to Pitlochry section opened. Once open, journey times throughout the north were greatly reduced, but to travel to London still took eighteen hours.

As the line opened, the branch line to Aberfeldy was already planned and opened in July 1865. The line had to cross both the River Tummel and Tay and viaducts were constructed to cross the rivers. The Tummel viaduct was demolished in the 1980s, having been adapted to carry the A827 it was removed to allow a new road bridge, leaving only its foundations visible from the Tummel road bridge.

The engineer responsible for the design of the bridge was Joseph Mitchell of Inverness. He had surveyed the Highland Line beginning in 1860. The metal work for the bridge was produced in Manchester by the Fairbairn Engineering Company and the contractor was Gowans and McKay. The striking feature of the viaduct are wrought iron lattice girders. They are supported by cylindrical cast iron piers filled with stone rubble and concrete. The shorter spans are of plate girder construction.

These embellishments were insisted upon by the sixth Duke of Atholl as a condition of being able to build the bridge. That they are cast iron and not stone saved a considerable amount of money, but have no structural function and serve only to make the bridge more imposing. The cost of the bridge was £13772.

From the outset the Aberfeldy branch line carried both passengers and freight. The arrival of the railway greatly facilitated the growth of the town as well as providing easy access for tourists.

For almost one hundred years the branch line served the local community and as times changed both steam and diesel engines operated on the line. In 1965 just months before the centenary of the bridge, the axe fell, wielded by Dr Beeching and arising from his 1963 report "The Reshaping of British Railways". Within months of the line's closure the track had been removed.

The Logierait Viaduct was sold to the local Kinnaird Estate in 1967. The track bed was converted for vehicle use by the estate and it became an essential route for the community who would otherwise have to travel further up the valley to cross the Tay. Over the years the condition of the bridge deteriorated and in 1991 fearing the bridge had become unsafe, the estate attempted to close the bridge to public access. Two local residents sought interdicts to prevent the closure which were awarded unopposed by the Estate at the High Court in Perth.

In 1994 the Kinnaird Estate gifted ownership of the bridge to a newly formed community company whose objective was simply to maintain a road link for the communities on either side of the River Tay. This meant that the bridge became the only community owned bridge in Scotland. The locally elected board of the company set to work to raise the money required to repair the bridge, this turned out to be nearly £400,000, and the bridge was reopened in 2001.

The work of restoring the bridge involved installing new decking and safety rails and repainting. The costs of maintaining the bridge come from subscriptions by local people and businesses and by donations from both local and national organisations. The bridge now forms part of national cycle routes 7 and 77. It is designated as being of historic and architectural importance by Historic Scotland at its highest level.

Co-ordinates are taken from the centre of the bridge.