Saturday 23 December 2017

Otago Central Railway [57C]: Otago Central / Taieri Gorge Railway Unconfirmed Bridge - 18 3/4 Miles

A file in Archives Dunedin dated 1913 refers to a bridge built at 18 3/4 miles which had 8 spans each 13 feet long, a total of 35 yards length. As no other information to corroborate the existence of this bridge has yet been found, it must be marked as hypothetical. It would have been as shown between Bridge 13 and Tunnel 7, between Machine Creek and Deep Stream.

One possibility is this bridge could have been replaced with a culvert, however there is no such structure recorded at this location in the chainage charts. Another possibility is that like Bridge 13A referred to in a recent post on this blog, it was a temporary structure later removed (although the file suggested it was to be made permanent). Bridge 13A was built to cover a slip and this could also have been the situation with this location. A close examination would confirm details such as whether a retaining wall exists in this location to enable the void in the embankment to be filled in. I don't have the ability to accomplish this obviously, so the bridge will remain on the map marked as shown above.