The line from Queanbeyan to Bombala still has a wealth of infrastructure that has not been removed by the razor gangs even though the line closed 25 years ago. The bonus is that the Cooma station and yard has everything that was there in 1965 (although the water tank is a ring-in relocated from Yannergee).
Among the items on the line are the three large timber trestles over Ingelara Creek, Bredbo River and Numerella River. All three are readily accessable if you are prepared to do a bit of walking (although check with the land owner first).
This post (there will be other posts on the infrastructure of this line) will concentrate on the 1889 built Bredbo River Bridge located at 412.616km, just under two kilometres south of Bredbo station. The bridge has ten 40 foot timber ballast topped Howe truss spans with brick abutments. Unique is the 30 degree skew of the timber piers, skewed to the flow of the river.
I have all the timber and bolts required to build an HO scale model of this bridge - stay tuned.
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| The bridge viewed from the down side looking in the down direction. |
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| Along the bridge from the up end in the down direction. |
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| Looking in the up direction - note the scouring of the ballast due to the failure of the timber decking in recent years. |
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| A view looking down showing the only major items of steel in the whole structure. |
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| A view of two of the spans |
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| Detail view of the span. |
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| A view of the abutment from underneath - note the red lead paint on the timbers - virtually everything the NSWGR did in timber was painted with the red lead to protect it. |
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| A side on detail view of one of the spans. |
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| A view of one of the timber piers - they are much wider than normal piers due to the skew - of interest is that the piers on the original plan are brick (similar to the brick sections of the piers of the Ingelara Creek bridge to the north). |
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| A view from the downstream (or up side) of the bridge looking in the down direction - the skewed piers can clearly be seen |
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| A view showing the upper section of one of the spans. |
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| The brick abutment. |
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| A view underneath of the abutment. |
wonderful structure - do u have plans and/or a parts list that could be posted? cheers Nick
ReplyDeleteI have some plans – ones from Greg Edwards that he has done and one from the Railway Archives that I got years ago – I’ll get around to publishing it. As to a parts list I have (sort of) guessed/worked out the wood requirements and the bolts but ultimately I won’t know how much of each until I have built it. I bought a lot of wood because I want to build a few bridges. I hope to start building it soon and updates will appear on the blog.
ReplyDeletethe whole line should never have been closed...plus as an interesting fact the land even tho overgrown and taken over by foolish farmers is still under nsw government and crown ownership so they cant remove the line or the rights owned to the land as most farmers are on crown leased land
ReplyDeleteby crown law it must stay there and be operable at any/all times
ReplyDelete