Building the last Main Line Railway

Newton to the Oxford Canal: gcrcs46

View of some of the temporary construction work required to help bridge the Oxford Canal circa 1896. The vertical boiler on the left was used to power the pumps that removed the water from the excavations for the bridge abutments. The depth of these abutment foundations would be probably fifteen to twenty feet deep even in the hard marl common to this area of the county. The excavation would have required the driving of steel piles to create a square box of a greater dimension than the foundation itself and then the area inside would be excavated, probably by hand due to the limited room. A concrete base would then be poured at the bottom and engineering bricks (hard blue waterproof bricks) would be laid on top of this foundation to form the actual abutment. Finally this would be capped with either stone or concrete to form a hard standing for the steel girders with one end on bearings designed to allow for movement.

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