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GWR Route: North Warwickshire Line

GWR Route: Banbury to Wolverhampton

Bordesley Viaduct: gwrbg2721

Brunel's Oxford Street bridge on the Birmingham Extension railway looking northwards

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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