Dowery Dell, between

Rubery Rubery is a village in the Bromsgrove District and a suburb of Birmingham in the counties of Worcestershire and West Midlands, England. It is from Birmingham city centre and a similar distance from Bromsgrove. Rubery was built on a sandstone q ...

and

Halesowen Halesowen ( ) is a market town in the Metropolitan Borough of Dudley, in the county of West Midlands, England. Historically an exclave of Shropshire and, from 1844, in Worcestershire, the town is around from Birmingham city centre, and from ...

Worcestershire Worcestershire ( , ; written abbreviation: Worcs) is a county in the West Midlands of England. The area that is now Worcestershire was absorbed into the unified Kingdom of England in 927, at which time it was constituted as a county (see His ...

, was a , nine span lattice steel, single-track railway viaduct that carried the Halesowen to Longbridge railway. A 10 mph speed limit was in operation. The line opened in 1883. Trains ran until 1964 and the viaduct was dismantled in 1965.

Similar structures

The viaduct was remarkable in being a rare example of a

lattice girder A lattice girder is a truss girder where the load is carried by a web of latticed metal. Overview The lattice girder was used prior to the development of larger rolled steel plates. It has been supplanted in modern construction with welded o ...

supported on trestles, a combination of which there may have been only one other example in Britain, at

Bennerley Viaduct The Bennerley Viaduct is a disused railway viaduct spanning the Erewash Valley between Awsworth (Nottinghamshire) and Ilkeston (Derbyshire) in central England. It was built in 1877 but closed to rail traffic in 1968, as part of the Beeching cuts ...

(extant), though in that instance the trestles are not as high. On other well-known trestle-supported viaducts, such as Meldon, Belah, and Crumlin, the superstructure is not a lattice, being typically a

Warren truss Warren Errol Truss, (born 8 October 1948) is a former Australian politician who served as the 16th Deputy Prime Minister of Australia and Minister for Infrastructure and Regional Development in the Abbott Government and the Turnbull Governm ...

; and other lattice girders are low structures supported typically on iron caissons, such as

Kew Railway Bridge Kew Railway Bridge spans the River Thames in London, England, between Kew and Strand-on-the-Green, Chiswick. The bridge was opened in 1869. History The bridge, which was given Grade II listed structure protection in 1983, was designed by ...

Remains

A walk along the footpath that follows the railway route reveals the brick pillar bases that remain in the dell.

References

External links

Two colour slides of the viaduct and track taken by photographer D J Norton in May 1955

Black & white photograph taken from a train crossing the viaduct in November 1963 by ricsrailpics
{{coord, 52.423374, -2.039359, region:GB_type:landmark, display=title Geography of Worcestershire Viaducts in England Demolished bridges in England Buildings and structures demolished in 1964 Great Western Railway Midland Railway