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GWR Route: North Warwickshire Line
GWR Route: Banbury to Wolverhampton
Bordesley Viaduct: gwrbg2721
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Brunel's Oxford Street bridge on the Birmingham Extension
railway looking northwards. Today this view is masked by the parallel 1913
structure carrying the lines into Moor Street. The drawing is from a series of
individual pictures taken at Kew of Rail 39/10 Box 3/5 GWR drawing number 11500
which portrays in ink and wash the Bordesley Viaduct roughly from Park Street,
the last underline bridge prior to embankment leading into the cutting which
lead up to Snow Hill and the Rea crossing at Floodgate Street but none of the
individual street crossings are identified. Beneath this is a hand-drawn pencil
sketch at the same scale of the Duddeston Viaduct though many previous
historians have confused it as timber variant of the Bordesley. So estimating
the bridge as roughly midway between the two points it must be Oxford Street as
here there are three narrow arches within the abutments on the northern side
though why the drawing shows four narrow arches on the north side and three on
the south side beats me. Today exploration of anything but the north face of
Brunel's structure is frustrated by the brick infill on the NCP car park
side.
Graham Laucht
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