A couple of the Harringworth Viaduct

[pdk42]

The Harringworth Viaduct (aka the Welland Viaduct) crosses the valley of the River Welland between Harringworth in Northamptonshire and Seaton in Rutland. It's an amazing Victorian structure:

- 1.16km long
- 82 piers
- Constructed from over 30 million bricks, most fired on-site
- Built in 13 months by entirely manual labour - 560 workers and 120 horses


Harringworth Viaduct Mono by Paul Kaye, on Flickr


The Harringworth Viaduct by Paul Kaye, on Flickr

It's hard not to compare with what's happening with HS2 at the moment. That's 141 miles of railway at an estimated completion cost of well over 100bn. That's approaching £1bn per mile making it the most expensive railway track in the world. There are 50 new viaducts being constructed, the longest of which is 3.4 km long (Colne Valley Viaduct). That's taken 4.5 years to build with thousands of workers, plus a lot of very heavy equipment to help.

So much for progress!

[Ian]

While there are pockets of resistance to expansion of the TGV here in France (and an extremely rare accident earlier this week), they do just get on with it here. From our nearest TGV station, at Poitiers, to Paris is 210 miles by road and even on the fast autoroutes it's a 3 hours and 45 minutes drive. The non-stop TGVs from Paris can do it in 1 hour and 15 minutes, and ticket prices are frequently quite reasonable. This is the line from Bordeaux to Paris LGV (Ligne Grande Vitesse), started in 2011 and completed just 6 years later - 336 miles long and the fastest trains can complete the journey in 2 hours and 8 minutes with 28 trains per day.

Ian

[drmarkf]

It’s worth bearing in mind that the population density of the U.K. is around 283 per sq km, while it’s around 120 in France…

On the other hand, thinking of a country where very major high speed rail links were developed rapidly, Japan is at something like 330!

[Joe_T]

Both very nice shots. and I learned a bit of history. I think one of the biggest scams in the world so far is "The train to nowhere" that was announced in 2008 to run between San Francisco and Los Angeles at an estimated cost of $33 billion.
Seventeen years later and $125 Billion now forecast to complete it and "Not a single rail has been laid yet"! At this point it may be cancelled without any track ever having been put down.

[pdk42]

Wow. Maybe that's even more of a white elephant than HS2 here in the UK!