Manchester And Leeds Railway Girder Bridge – Chadderton, UK
Posted by: 
dtrebilc
N 53° 33.365 W 002° 10.318
30U E 554852 N 5934451
This blue and white girder bridge was built to carry the Manchester and Leeds railway over the Rochdale Canal. It replaced an earlier cast iron bridge next to it that had structural problems.
Waymark Code: WMK8J2
Location: North West England, United Kingdom
Date Posted: 02/28/2014
Views: 1
The bridge stands next to lock 61 on the Rochdale Canal. The railway gave improved communications and freight carrying capacity and ultimately led to the canal's demise as a working canal, although it was reopened in 2002 for use by leisure boaters.
The Rochdale canal, which opened in 1804 is 32 miles long and connects Manchester on the west side of the Pennine Hills and Sowerby Bridge on the east side. Although revolutionary in its day, the necessity of crossing the Pennines meant that there was a total of 92 locks in its relatively short length.
The railway was longer than the canal but ran largely parallel with it, but crosses the canal a number of times. This railway bridge is a skewed bridge crossing the canal at an acute angle.
The original bridge is an English Heritage Listed building and is still standing even though the track bed has been removed. This new bridge is a plainer design than the original.
This
Wikipedia page has details of the railway line, but this extract is a short summary. "The line climbed out of Manchester with an average gradient of 1 in 260 (0.38%) until it arrived at the summit and a 2,860 yards (2,620 m) long tunnel at Littleborough. From there it descended towards Normanton. The rails were of 15 feet (4.6 m) lengths laid at a gauge of 4 ft 9 in (1,448 mm) with a mixture of stone blocks and, on the embankments, wooden sleepers. The locomotives were provided by local manufacturers, six-wheeled Stephenson pattern. Carriages were all four wheeled. The average weight of a train would be about 18 tons, with an average speed of about 25 MPH (40 km/h), reaching approx. 42 MPH (67.6 km/h) downhill."
The railway line and bridge are still in use and these days form part of the
Caldervale Line.