Tinsley Viaduct is a two-tier
road bridge in
Sheffield,
England; it was the first of its kind in the United Kingdom. It carries the
M1 and the
A631 for a distance of over the
Don Valley, from
Tinsley to
Wincobank
Shiregreen and Brightside ward—which includes the districts of Brightside, Shiregreen, and Wincobank—is one of the 28 electoral wards in City of Sheffield, England. It is located in the northern part of the city and covers an area ...
, also crossing the
Sheffield Canal
The Sheffield & Tinsley Canal is a canal in the City of Sheffield, England. It runs from Tinsley, where it leaves the River Don, to the Sheffield Canal Basin (now Victoria Quays) in the city centre, passing through 11 locks. The maximum craf ...
, the
Midland Main Line and the former
South Yorkshire Railway line from
Tinsley Junction to
Rotherham Central. The
Supertram route to
Meadowhall runs below part of the viaduct on the trackbed of the South Yorkshire Railway line to
Barnsley
Barnsley () is a market town in South Yorkshire, England. As the main settlement of the Metropolitan Borough of Barnsley and the fourth largest settlement in South Yorkshire. In Barnsley, the population was 96,888 while the wider Borough has ...
.
History
The lower deck of the
viaduct was opened in March 1968 and the upper deck, carrying the M1, on 19 October 1968.
The build cost was £6 million. The structure is unusual in that it is built as
steel box girders, at a time when most long span bridges were being built of
post-tensioned concrete deck design. The use of steel allowed a significant cost saving over alternative methods, but became controversial following two disasters involving steel bridges in 1970 (the
West Gate Bridge in Australia and the
Cleddau Bridge in Wales) and another in 1971 (the in Germany). Fifty-one people were killed in these failures, leading in the UK to the formation of the Merrison Committee.
The report of the Merrison committee resulted in the temporary closure of two of the carriageways on the lower deck and two on the upper deck, the installation of extra steel strengthening bands around the bridge's support columns and other works which were completed in 1983. A further programme of strengthening was completed in 2006. The recent work to strengthen the bridge was a very complex operation, with a lot of the work happening inside the box beam spine. The works took over 3 years and cost £82 million (nearly 9 times the original bridge building cost, adjusting for inflation). The strengthening project won the British construction industry's
Major Project Award in 2005.
Although originally designed to carry a dual 3-lane motorway on the top deck, during and subsequent to the strengthening work the M1 was reduced to 2 lanes following an
EU directive on load bearing capacity to allow for the introduction of 40-tonne trucks in the UK. This arrangement allowed the third lane in each direction to join from Junction 34 to make the busy junction safer. Since the opening of the M1 junction 32 to 35a
smart motorway
A smart motorway (formerly managed motorway and active traffic management), also known in Scotland as an intelligent transport system, is a section of motorway in the United Kingdom (primarily in England) that employs active traffic managem ...
scheme in January 2017, the viaduct once again carries 3 lanes of traffic plus hard shoulders in each direction.
The viaduct is balanced on rollers to allow for thermal expansion and contraction, and the route weaves slightly in order to make its way past obstacles. The viaduct, due to its construction, is very flexible. Movement may be felt on the lower deck as the traffic passes overhead. The
Meadowhall Shopping Centre lies in the valley to the west; to the east is the
Blackburn Meadows
Blackburn Meadows is an area of land just inside the Sheffield city border at Tinsley, England. It became the location of the main sewage treatment works for the city in 1884, and is now one of the largest treatment works in Britain. The treat ...
sewage works
Sewage treatment (or domestic wastewater treatment, municipal wastewater treatment) is a type of wastewater treatment which aims to remove contaminants from sewage to produce an effluent that is suitable for discharge to the surrounding envir ...
and new biomass power station.
Tinsley cooling towers
The viaduct is one of Sheffield's most prominent landmarks, and was once made all the more so by the adjacent pair of
cooling tower
A cooling tower is a device that rejects waste heat to the atmosphere through the cooling of a coolant stream, usually a water stream to a lower temperature. Cooling towers may either use the evaporation of water to remove process heat and c ...
s that were left standing for safety reasons after the demolition of the
Blackburn Meadows Power Station. The cooling towers were a major point of contention over the years and were once saved from destruction only after being chosen as a nesting site by a rare bird. More recently, plans were made to turn them into a piece of public art. Other plans for the towers included concert halls, skate parks and a theme park.
Their iconic status, and the possibly prohibitive costs of demolishing the towers safely, until recently looked to have cemented their status in Sheffield's future as much as they were a part of its history, until the owner of the towers (and the now-demolished power station),
E.ON UK, stated its intention to demolish them once the strengthening of the viaduct made it feasible.
The towers were demolished at 03:00 BST on 24 August 2008, though a significant portion of the north tower remained standing for a short while. The demolition attracted widespread attention. A viewing platform was set up so the public could watch the demolition. Part of the site has been converted for use as a
biomass power station
A power station, also referred to as a power plant and sometimes generating station or generating plant, is an industrial facility for the generation of electric power. Power stations are generally connected to an electrical grid.
Many pow ...
by the owners E.ON UK.
In popular culture
The Tinsley Viaduct is featured among several other locations as the site of "ground zero" for a fictional
Soviet Union nuclear strike
Nuclear warfare, also known as atomic warfare, is a theoretical military conflict or prepared political strategy that deploys nuclear weaponry. Nuclear weapons are weapons of mass destruction; in contrast to conventional warfare, nuclear wa ...
on
Sheffield depicted in ''
Threads'' (1984), a depiction of what might have happened had
NATO and the Soviet Union entered conflict over hypothetical instability in
Iran that escalated into full
nuclear war
Nuclear warfare, also known as atomic warfare, is a theoretical military conflict or prepared political strategy that deploys nuclear weaponry. Nuclear weapons are weapons of mass destruction; in contrast to conventional warfare, nuclear ...
. In the ensuing nuclear exchange, a one-
megaton
Megaton may refer to:
* A million tons
* Megaton TNT equivalent, explosive energy equal to 4.184 petajoules
* megatonne, a million tonnes, SI unit of mass
Other uses
* Olivier Megaton (born 1965), French film director, writer and editor
* '' ...
nuclear missile explodes above the Tinsley Viaduct, devastating most of surrounding
Sheffield.
See also
*
List of bridges in the United Kingdom
Bridges in the United Kingdom is a link page for any road bridges or footbridges in the United Kingdom.
Railway bridges are listed under: List of railway bridges and viaducts in the United Kingdom.
Canal aqueducts are listed under: List of ...
References
External links
Go sheffo: Cooling the TowersCooling towers public art competition held in 2005.
Standing on the Shoulders of GiantsBlackburn Meadows cooling tower climb
{{SheffieldStructures
Bridges completed in 1968
Bridges in Sheffield
Bridges over the River Don, South Yorkshire
Motorway bridges in England
Road transport in Sheffield
Steel bridges in the United Kingdom
Viaducts in England
M1 motorway
Double-decker bridges
1968 establishments in England