Manchester ship canal bridges

[Michael Delamar]

Ive always thought large girder bridges that span the Manchester ship canal around the Warrington area are impressive and interesting, but know very little about them, even how many there are.

 

every time I pass one I always mean to ask questions here on them, but usually forget by the time Im home.

 

would just like to have a general discussion on them please.

 

such as, when where they built? what techniques used to errect them? any photos of those early days?

 

any photos of the closed ones when they where still used?

 

the ones that have closed, why did they close?

 

just any snippets of info please

 

cheers

 

Mike

[PaulRhB]

My grandparents lived one house down from the Chester Road one so I spent many hours watching ships pass through as a kid on visits as the front bay window gave a fantastic view. There were 7 road bridges, 4 railway and also at least one canal bridge.

The canal opened in 1894 and the bridges appear to be mostly original though there were various modifications made.

 

The best book is this with a good overall history is; Manchester Ship Canal - Edward Gray - Sutton Publishing ISBN 0750914599 125 pages

 

Old pictures with a brief history ; The Manchester Ship Canal - Chris Makepiece - ISBN 0860670856 47 pages

 

This one focuses on the railways rather than the bridges but very good on it's own; The railways of the Manchester Ship Canal - Don Thorpe - Oxford Publishing Co. - ISBN 0860932885 185 pages

[Suzie]

Wikipedia has some info about the canal which should help identify the bridges:-

 

http://en.wikipedia....ster_Ship_Canal

 

The line over Latchford bridge was still very busy in 1985 when it was closed because of the repairs required to the bridge. Some info here:-

 

http://www.disused-s...ord/index.shtml

They were mostly built around 1893 when the canal was built. The railways were already there and had to be diverted over the high bridges.

 

Here is a nice site dedicated to the bridges:-

 

 

http://homepages.tesco.net/frankshackleton/mscbridges/odyframe.htm

 

 

 

 

 

[Michael Delamar]

many thanks

 

suzie, that last link is very good.

 

its caddishead and latchford that are of the main interest now I know which ones are which.

been having a look on google maps.

 

would love to see some shots of them with trains on, anything from steam era to the last days

 

and also old shots of the other lnwr ones with trains on.

 

theres something about them that I like

 

cheers

 

Mike

[PaulRhB]

The majority of pictures I've seen are of the internal railway system with only odd ones of the mainline bridges, and then the majority seem to be aerial shots. The second book I mentioned above has a picture of 10 locos on the Irwell bridge when they weight tested it before opening, that always strikes me as an expensive way to test them, if anything went wrong, when a load of weighted flats would surely have sufficed?

All the bridges were pretty impressive and I remember watching 20's on freight from where we took our bikes on an old industrial site.

[Michael Delamar]

great stuff paul

 

doing a bit of a search I came across a shot on this site, I can see now that the bridges where built before the canal.

 

http://citynoise.org/article/4343

 

Mike

[Edwin_m]

If you look at Googlemaps you can see where the railways used to be before the bridges were built. They seem to have built the bridges alongside the railway then diverted the railway onto them. You can also see how they combined the Crewe and Chester lines south from Warrington onto a single bridge.

 

I believe some of the bits of old railway were kept as links between the main line and the ship canal railway system.

[Jenny Emily]

As others have said, the new bridges were built, with the embankments made from spoil excavated from the route of the canal. They were opened before the original routes were closed and severed. At Cadishead, the old route heading south actually lasted longer than the new route, serving a bitumen terminal I believe after the route to Skelton junction was severed between Glazebrook and Partington. I think there are some plans to reopen this particular route, because a new bridge was built for a road improvement on the north bank of the canal, allowing the rail embankment to remain - it seems odd that they would build a rail bridge if there were no plans for the rail route.

 

Latchford shut because of expensive repairs being needed to the bridge. The bridge still exists, and I believe that track still remains in the undergrouth as far as the bridge to a point just immediately to the south of it. It is fenced off with palisade fencing though. The route through Lymm was severed when the M6 was widened - previously there was a bridge under the motorway here. Given that no maintenance seems to have been carried out on Latchford viaduct since closure, I can't believe it is in very good shape at all now. You would have thought that given how it dominates the town at this point, that they could have given it a coat of paint and stopped it being such an eyesore. I think the bridge may be grade II listed, but I'm not sure on that.

 

I have only vague memories of trains using the now closed routes. I do remember the bridge under the M6 being removed when the second motorway viaduct over the canal was built - there was plenty of time to see the work on a daily commute from Manchester to Stoke-on-Trent in the perminant queue of traffic that existed during and prior to the roadworks.

 

There was a swing bridge too at Salford for the ship canal's railway. It is no longer in situe, but was moved to a new location where it is used as a footbridge. It was a wartime replacement I believe for the previous single track bridge. The pier that the bridges pivoted on can still be seen. I seem to recall that the clearance under the bridge was only a few feet meaning that it had to swing to let pretty much any boat progress any further into Manchester - probably why it was removed.

 

The road swing bridge further into Manchester was higher, meaning that being fixed in place after the second bridge was built adjacent to it was not an issue. The original bridge that carried the road over the old alignment of the river Irwell persisted after the canal was built. The river bed was filled in and it became a railway bridge allowing access to industrial buildings along the banks of the canal into Manchester.

 

I have a couple of books somewhere on the ship canal as well as Trafford Park, which have a lot of interesting photographs. I would have to search to find where I've put them though.

[Arthur]

 At Barton there is still the Barton Road swing bridge, I recall in hot summers, when swung open to allow ships to pass, the steelwork would expand and when they then tried to close it, it would jam. The Fire Brigade would be called out to spray cold water on it and so allow it to close.  If this happened at the start or end of the working day much traffic chaos ensued.  Before the opening of the high level bridge it was the only access from the North West into Trafford Park and in the early fifties over 10,000 vehicles used it daily between 6:30 and 8:00 a.m.

 

Sharing it's island is Barton Aqueduct, 

 

http://www.geograph.org.uk/photo/1543

 

essentially a swinging steel trough which allows the Bridgewater Canal to pass over the Ship Canal and which can be swung open to allow ships to pass.  There used to be, it may still be there, an observation platform high over the Ship Canal at the southern end of the aqueduct. It was amazing to watch an ocean going vessel being guided through the gap, with a tug fore and aft, and just a couple of feet clearance either side.

 

The high level bridge at Barton opened in 1960 and had a tragic build history. In February 1959 scaffolding supporting one end of the main centre girders collapsed and four men died. Then, in December 1959 the main girders toppled over whilst being worked on, one of them fell 75 feet to the ground and two men were killed.

 

 

 

 

Arthur

[Michael Delamar]

they do cruises along the canal using the mersey ferries, quite fancy a trip along it, its fascinating

 

Mike

[Taigatrommel]

Just a couple more links on this subject...

 

http://www.forgottenrelics.co.uk/bridges/gallery/latchford.html

 

http://www.forgottenrelics.co.uk/bridges/gallery/partington.html

[Michael Delamar]

great stuff

 

this guys fotopic site is excellent.

http://j-eyres.fotopic.net/

 

lots of nice shots, mainly dedicated to ships on the canal, but theres plenty of shots of the bridges, such as this interesting one of track still on latchford viaduct. http://j-eyres.fotopic.net/p39634301.html

also,was the partington viaduct 4 track?

 

Mike

[Bomag]

One bridge which has not been mentioned is the industrial line accross the transporter bridge in Warrington. I saw it about 5 years ago and it wasn't in too bad a condition.

 

It would make an interesting idustrial layout.

[Michael Delamar]

been having a look into that, fascinating.

 

ok its not the ship canal, but would make a interesting model, lot of work mind.

 

back to topic, surprised theres no photos on fotopic or similar of trains on these bridges, even acton grange

 

Mike

[Pugsley]

At Cadishead, the old route heading south actually lasted longer than the new route, serving a bitumen terminal I believe after the route to Skelton junction was severed between Glazebrook and Partington.

Yes, it did, to serve British Tar Products at Cadishead. The tanks were unloaded on one side of the bridge embankment and the product was piped through to the works on the other side. For those interested, there's a lot of photos and some interesting info here:

http://glazebrookeast.fotopic.net/

[Thomas]

And here's one of 86046 heading north.

 

[coachmann]

How things change in just half a Century. I have nothing to add to the bridge question but I remember the Ship Canal as something rather murky and scary particularly around Trafford Park. I also delivered and collected parts from Mode Wheel loco depot near Salford and various firms connected to the canal in 1959 while on BR Parcels out of Manchester Victoria. It seemed at the time that everyone had thier own 'little' steam locos; soap works, sewerage farm plus the MSC. I recall seeing a Fowler 0-8-0 struggling to lift a freight off the canal road up an incline to BR somewhere on our route.

 

At that time it is a fair bet nothing had changed for 50 years, yet add 50 years to bring one to today and I probably wouldn't recognise Salford, Weast, Eccles, Urmston, Pendleton or Pendlebury (?).

 

Larry

[Arthur]

How things change in just half a Century. I have nothing to add to the bridge question but I remember the Ship Canal as something rather murky and scary particularly around Trafford Park. I also delivered and collected parts from Mode Wheel loco depot near Salford and various firms connected to the canal in 1959 while on BR Parcels out of Manchester Victoria. It seemed at the time that everyone had thier own 'little' steam locos; soap works, sewerage farm plus the MSC. I recall seeing a Fowler 0-8-0 struggling to lift a freight off the canal road up an incline to BR somewhere on our route.

 

At that time it is a fair bet nothing had changed for 50 years, yet add 50 years to bring one to today and I probably wouldn't recognise Salford, Weast, Eccles, Urmston, Pendleton or Pendlebury (?).

 

Larry

 

Larry,

 

You certainly wouldn't recognise the Eccles/Weaste/Salford corridor into Manchester along the old A57, it has changed out of all recogntion.  I was brought up in Eccles and can testify to the nature of the canal, it seemed to have a kind of oily purple bloom to it and it was held, it may have been urban myth, that if you fell in, a trip to hospital to have your stomach pumped was required.

 

That  Austin Seven would probably have been struggling up the curve just to the west of Weaste bus depot.  The line from the M.S.C. system passed north under the A57, curving sharply westwards, and climbed up to join the ex. LNWR Eccles to Manchester line at Stott Lane sidings just east of Eccles station.

 

The only other M.S.C. to B.R. link in the area was that which ran from Salford docks, tunnelling much of it's way under Ordsall and emerging by the old cattle docks and Gasworks in the ex L & Y yard near what later become the Windsor Link.

 

 

Arthur

[coachmann]

Thanks Arthur. We delivered to Weast bus depot so I may well have seen the 7F near there. The road you mentioned was full of small factories manufacturing raincoats, some plastic and some cotton (Melrayne, Quelrain etc) plus a fair number of sweatshops, converted shops with people sat at sewing machines making gloves. The electric cables were into wall and light sockets but of course no one was worried in those days. These women could turn out a fair number of boxes for us to collect late afternoon. At Mode Wheel I saw the MSC wages van, an ex-Midland Railway 6-wheel coach I think.

[Andy C]

Talk about shutting the stable door after the horse has bolted - Up till a few weeks ago I had drawings of the bridge at Latchford, acquired after we had moved out of the old Rochdale Club rooms - as i couldnt find anyone who actually wanted them they went into the recycling bin just before York show

 

On a personal memory basis i recall a cruise down the MSC on a day in May 1968 on a school outing (last year of Junior School!), it was sunny, the canal reeked but it was busy and fascinated and i recall seeing an 8F going over the Irlam high level bridge. It was on the very day after a team from the Trafford area had won the European cup

[Coombe Barton]

they do cruises along the canal using the mersey ferries, quite fancy a trip along it, its fascinating

I went to a conference on water in 1998ish and one of the talks was on the Manchester Ship Canal and cleaning it up. All Victorian sewers empty into the canal (unttreated), and as these are (were) mainly unmapped this is a problem. The person giving the talk referred to 'fecal rafts' about 10metres long that it was possible to stand on and float and, following a question, mentioned that if a water bus service into Manchester/Salford were to be offered (as was then offered on the Thames) the boats would have to be fully enclosed because of the health risk. They actually did stand on the rafts to measure them until they found out what they were.

 

The amount of effort expended into keeping the Salford Quays area clean (which involves mechanically oxygenating the water for ever) is very large - you could not do that for the whole canal.

 

The problem with that waterway is that there is virtually no flow - it's static. Probably the largest village pond ever.

 

I don't know how things have improved since.

 

As an aside, when the presenter mentioned the fecal rafts, virtually everyone in the conference renamed it to the Mahchester Sh*t Canal.

[Andy C]

As my office window overlooks No 8 dock, now known as Ontario Basin, I can confirm that the ordure of Manchester no longer floats by!

 

The aerators actually in the dock dont seem to be on all the time these days - in the early days they were on constantly. There is also a thriving watersports centre now at the canal end of the dock, and also those with nothing better to do in Ordsal actually go fishing there now!

[Coombe Barton]

The aerators actually in the dock dont seem to be on all the time these days - in the early days they were on constantly.

Bet if they were off for a couple of weeks you'd soon know!

[coachmann]

The above posts answer a few things for me. I nearly jumped into the MSC when I thought I was leaping off a loading bay onto concrete! The water looked solid as it supported all sorts of debris that one would expect around factories and bays. I was accompanying a friend on a lorry from Holyrood Mill, Royton Junction, collect paper waste from Trafford Park.

[Arthur]

 Having made mention above about 'stomach pumping' following a dip in the canal, I recalled later that following the fatal canal fire in 1970, at Partington, police divers were prohibited from entering the water to search for missing bodies because it was so polluted. The bodies turned up a few days later.

 

On a happier note, a few years back, whilst visiting my dad, I took our Retreiver, Harvey, for a walk along the canal bank at Barton. Before I could stop him he was in for a swim; he celebrates his 14th birthday in two weeks so it appears not to have done him too much harm.

 

Arthur