Saturday 6 June 2015

Dunedin-Mosgiel Railway Duplication [2]



Another series of photos from 1907. The first three photos show various grade separation bridges under construction, with the one at Wilkie Road again being in the large centre photo. The existing line is clearly climbing in the right of this photo - my estimation was that the lines would have been at equal height by the time of reaching South Road, which was a bridge on the original line. You can see the original line appearing to cross a bridge in the background - probably a stream, not South Road itself. As I noted the new bridges were all built alongside the existing line, whereas existing bridges were in some cases built up to the new height and the existing line simply raised higher.

This is interesting because it should have been possible to build half a bridge then build one of the new lines onto it, make that the running line and then do the other side on top of the existing line, but clearly that was not the technique used because of the photos which clearly show three tracks at various places.