Boythorpe Viaduct was a railway
viaduct
A viaduct is a specific type of bridge that consists of a series of arches, piers or columns supporting a long elevated railway or road. Typically a viaduct connects two points of roughly equal elevation, allowing direct overpass across a wide v ...
in
Chesterfield
Chesterfield may refer to:
Places Canada
* Rural Municipality of Chesterfield No. 261, Saskatchewan
* Chesterfield Inlet, Nunavut United Kingdom
* Chesterfield, Derbyshire, a market town in England
** Chesterfield (UK Parliament constitue ...
, England.
Description
The viaduct had two spans and two arches, which carried the
LD&ECR's Chesterfield Market Place to
Lincoln Central
Lincoln railway station (previously Lincoln Central) serves the city of Lincoln in Lincolnshire, England. The station is owned by Network Rail and managed by East Midlands Railway. East Midlands Railway provides the majority of services from th ...
double track main line over the
Midland Railway's "Brampton Branch" and the industrial "Boythorpe Railway" a few hundred yards East of Chesterfield Market Place Station.
Photographs of the viaduct are rare and mentions in the literature even rarer, the clearest are collected on a DVD, repeated by Booth. An image taken between closure and demolition is on the internet.
Boythorpe Viaduct at track level
/ref> The viaduct lay approximately one third of the way between the Park Road brick arch bridge and Horns Bridge
Horns Bridge is a small area on the southeastern edge of Chesterfield, Derbyshire, England which was remarkable at one time for its congested intersection of roads, rivers, footpaths and railways.
Description
Three levels
Horns Bridge was a ...
with embankments separating the three structures.
History
The viaduct was opened in 1897 along with the rest of the line.
The section between Chesterfield and Langwith Junction (by then renamed Shirebrook North), was closed to passenger traffic by British Railways
British Railways (BR), which from 1965 traded as British Rail, was a state-owned company that operated most of the overground rail transport in Great Britain from 1948 to 1997. It was formed from the nationalisation of the Big Four British rai ...
in December 1951, due to the unsafe condition of Bolsover Tunnel
Bolsover Tunnel is a disused and infilled twin-track railway tunnel between Carr Vale and Scarcliffe in Derbyshire, England.
At it was the 18th longest railway tunnel in Britain prior to its closure in 1951.
History
The tunnel was opened by ...
and concerns over the safety of Doe Lea Viaduct
Doe Lea Viaduct is a former railway viaduct near Carr Vale, Bolsover, Derbyshire, England.
Location
The viaduct was originally, formally known as Bolsover Viaduct and is often referred to as Carr Vale Viaduct. It was a substantial, double trac ...
, both of which were affected by colliery subsidence. Bolsover South and Scarcliffe
Scarcliffe is a village and civil parish in the Bolsover district of Derbyshire, England. It is sometimes called Scarcliffe with Palterton. The population of the parish (including the hamlets of Palterton, Rylah, Stockley, and parts of Stony H ...
were closed completely.
Boythorpe Viaduct remained in use until March 1957 when goods traffic to and from Chesterfield Market Place Station ceased. Tracks were lifted over the structure in the next two years.
No trace remains of the viaduct, or indeed of any of the massive LD&ECR presence to the West of the Midland Main Line
The Midland Main Line is a major railway line in England from London to Nottingham and Sheffield in the Midlands. It comprises the lines from London's St Pancras station via Leicester, Derby/Nottingham and Chesterfield in the East Midlands.
...
at what is now the Horns Bridge roundabout. The Brampton Branch outlived the LD&ECR, but is now no more, as is the Boythorpe Railway.
References
*
*
*
*
*
*
Further reading
*
*
*
*
External links
*{{cite web , url=http://maps.nls.uk/geo/explore/#zoom=16&lat=53.2328&lon=-1.4313&layers=6&b=1 , title=The viaduct on a navigable Edwardian 6" OS map , website=National Library of Scotland
Lancashire, Derbyshire and East Coast Railway structures
Railway viaducts in Derbyshire
Demolished bridges in England
Former railway bridges in the United Kingdom