Ribblehead Viaduct

Railways in Northern England are well known for their fine stone-built viaducts. Here in Japan the first good tremor would have one of these turned into a heap of rubble in the bottom of the valley in about ten seconds. But in Britain more stable geology and the availability of good quality cheap limestone for building made this kind of design very popular.

And this I suppose is the daddy of them all - Ribblehead Viaduct. It's on the Settle - Carlisle line anout fifteen miles north of Settle. The bridge was constructed in the early 1870's on the new Midland Railway route from Leeds north to the Scottish border.

It wasn't an easy task. Part of the bridge was built over a bog called Batty Moss and they struggled to get a good foundation for the piers.

In the 1980's this viaduct was so much in need of repair that there was talk of closing the line but thankfully even Margaret Thatcher realised that it was a political non-starter. We take our railway heritage seriously in England! It was repaired at huge cost although now it's been single tracked to conserve the structure.

Back in the 1960's I often caught the train over this viaduct to climb Ingleborough - the mountain hidden in clouds in the background. Here's a double-headed excursion in March 2004 with a 4MT on the 'nose' - if you want to see more of Andrew Naylor's lovely pictures go here