The Nene Viaduct is a railway bridge immediately south of

Peterborough railway station Peterborough railway station serves the city of Peterborough, Cambridgeshire, England. It is down the East Coast Main Line from . The station is a major interchange serving both the north–south ECML, as well as long-distance and local e ...

Cambridgeshire Cambridgeshire (abbreviated Cambs.) is a county in the East of England, bordering Lincolnshire to the north, Norfolk to the north-east, Suffolk to the east, Essex and Hertfordshire to the south, and Bedfordshire and Northamptonshire to the ...

, Eastern England. It was built to carry the Great Northern Railway across the

River Nene The River Nene ( or : see below) is a river in the east of England that rises from three sources in Northamptonshire.OS Explorer Map sheet 223, Northampton & Market Harborough, Brixworth & Pitsford Water. The river is about long, about of w ...

. It is a Grade II*

listed building In the United Kingdom, a listed building or listed structure is one that has been placed on one of the four statutory lists maintained by Historic England in England, Historic Environment Scotland in Scotland, in Wales, and the Northern Irel ...

History and design

The Nene Viaduct was built in 1850 by father and son Sir William Cubitt and

Joseph Cubitt Joseph Cubitt (24 November 1811 – 7 December 1872) was an English civil engineer. Amongst other projects, he designed the Blackfriars Railway Bridge over the River Thames in London. Early life Cubitt was born in Horning, Norfolk, on 24 Nove ...

for the Great Northern Railway to carry their main line across the

just south of Peterborough. It is bridge number 184 on what is today the East Coast Main Line. The viaduct was constructed using

cast iron Cast iron is a class of iron– carbon alloys with a carbon content more than 2%. Its usefulness derives from its relatively low melting temperature. The alloy constituents affect its color when fractured: white cast iron has carbide impur ...

and consists of six

ribs The rib cage, as an enclosure that comprises the ribs, vertebral column and sternum in the thorax of most vertebrates, protects vital organs such as the heart, lungs and great vessels. The sternum, together known as the thoracic cage, is a semi- ...

bolted together to form two segments, spanning the River Nene in three

arches An arch is a vertical curved structure that spans an elevated space and may or may not support the weight above it, or in case of a horizontal arch like an arch dam, the hydrostatic pressure against it. Arches may be synonymous with vault ...

. It is supported by two piers in the water, which each consist of three pairs of

fluted Fluting may refer to: *Fluting (architecture) * Fluting (firearms) * Fluting (geology) * Fluting (glacial) *Fluting (paper) Arts, entertainment, and media *Fluting on the Hump ''Fluting on the Hump'' is the first album by avant-garde band Kin ...

columns; these rest on caissons that are sunk into the river. Steel bracing beneath the arches forms a walkway and the

spandrel A spandrel is a roughly triangular space, usually found in pairs, between the top of an arch and a rectangular frame; between the tops of two adjacent arches or one of the four spaces between a circle within a square. They are frequently fill ...

s contain diamond-shaped latticework. At the top is a decorative balustrade, also of cast iron. The

abutment An abutment is the substructure at the ends of a bridge span or dam supporting its superstructure. Single-span bridges have abutments at each end which provide vertical and lateral support for the span, as well as acting as retaining walls ...

s are of brick construction, twelve arches on the south bank and three on the north. The bridge has a plaque that claims that the Nene Viaduct is the last surviving cast-iron structure on a main railway line in Britain. The plaque originally attributed the bridge incorrectly to Lewis Cubitt, but this has now been amended to Joseph Cubitt. :File:Peterborough 1850 iron bridge.jpg<--> The bridge has been strengthened several times through its history, including with steel ties in 1910 and additional work in 1914, but continues to carry high-speed trains today. The railway line was quadrupled in 1924, at which time a second bridge was constructed alongside the Nene Viaduct. The second is a steel

truss bridge A truss bridge is a bridge whose load-bearing superstructure is composed of a truss, a structure of connected elements, usually forming triangular units. The connected elements (typically straight) may be stressed from tension, compression, or ...

and is not considered by

Historic England Historic England (officially the Historic Buildings and Monuments Commission for England) is an executive non-departmental public body of the British Government sponsored by the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport. It is tasked w ...

to be of special interest.

References

{{Reflist Grade II* listed railway bridges and viaducts Grade II* listed buildings in Cambridgeshire Railway viaducts in Cambridgeshire Bridges across the River Nene Buildings and structures in Peterborough

History and design

See also

References