Skip to main content

Valley of the Engineers: The Boyne Viaduct

Leaving my Roman sojourn into George Papworth’s Drogheda railway station, I head northward to the Boyne Viaduct. I pass the original Dublin and Drogheda stone engine shed and then – holy moley – the earth falls from under me and the Mesopotamian arch of Ctesiphon is recreated twelve-fold. 

Boyne Viaduct (S. Osgood)
Agog, I needed to watch my step and not the towering vertigo-inducing spans which rose piercingly from the River Boyne’s embankment. I stopped, composed and consoled myself that the steep steps down would be worth the ascension after my mooching about. 
Boyne Viaduct (S. Osgood)
Soaring across the Drogheda skyline the Boyne Viaduct was designed by Sir John Macneill (1793-1880) from 1844 and constructed between 1851 and 1855. Twelve round arches span the southern embankment, with three on the northern side, whilst tapering stone piers support the central section.
Boyne Viaduct (S. Osgood)
Constructed of hand-cut limestone and granite blocks, visual aesthetics were not forgotten. The arches and their piers are finished with smoothed voussoirs and quoins, and a decorative shield for both railway companies adorned the towers standing as gateways from the abutments. 
Boyne Viaduct (S. Osgood)
Born in Co. Louth, Macneill was one of the most prominent railway engineers of the nineteenth century and was engineer in chief of the Dublin and Drogheda Railway. He was also the first Professor of Engineering at Trinity College Dublin. He introduced to Britain and Ireland the principles of iron lattice-girder bridge construction and demonstrated them firstly at the Royal Canal and here, most dramatically, across the River Boyne. 
Sir John Benjamin Macneill (National Science & Engineering Plaques Committee)
The viaduct connected the DDR with the Dublin and Belfast Junction Railway, thus creating the Dublin-Belfast line which still operates today. By train the sudden drop heading northward from Drogheda Station is even more Wayne’s World awesome. 

The DDR train line was open and operational from 1844, the DBR from 1849. And so before the Boyne Viaduct was completed passengers at Drogheda had to disembark at the temporary railway station at Newfoundwell from 1849-1852, and join the Belfast line by road or boat to the north-side station at Ballymakenny. From 1853 a temporary viaduct was in place and in 1852 George Papworth’s station was opened. 

The original engineering drawings by Macneill show the minutiae of rivets, bolts, joists and T- and I-irons required to support such an enormous structure, not to mention the Neo-Classical capitals of the central supports. Each lattice-work section was drawn page-by-page, each with measurement, instruction and intricate penmanship. The engineering draughtsmanship offers evidence of superior technical drawing, colour-washes and most importantly, shading for depth-perception. Each page is signed and dated by Macneill in 1844 and 1845. 

Design for Boyne Viaduct DDR (IRRS Archive)

However, the design of the Boyne Viaduct was contested by John Macneill’s former pupil at Trinity College, James Barton. In 1852 Barton presented a paper at the British Association’s Belfast meeting, claiming Macneill had assigned him the task of “working out the detail” of the calculations for the lattice-girder design. But does this make Barton the designer? I’ll leave that up to the reader. 

Scale models for the viaduct were in the Engineering Department at Trinity (probably upon which Barton calculated his adjustments) which is now in the Irish Architectural Archive. The second model was donated by Macneill to the Musée des Arts et Métiers in Paris, which is still on display. 

Boyne Viaduct (S. Osgood)

And so I retrace my steps, and climb up and up (and up) to Drogheda station, acutely aware of the modest scale of man juxtaposed with our extreme feats of engineering: from Newgrange's chambers to Macneill's magnificent spans. In the words of Voltaire: “Appreciation is a wonderful thing: it makes what is excellent in others belong to us as well.” 



Sources

Buildings of Ireland

Dictionary of Irish Architects

Irish Architectural Archive 

Irish Railway Record Society 

Highlanes Gallery Drogheda 


Popular posts from this blog

Spinning at Balbriggan

Recovered from my rather cranky experience at Skerries , my eyes are rewarded and my heart gladdened on the approach to Balbriggan. Arriving from the south and entering the station over John Macneill’s viaduct, a neat, contained lump of a station reassures me as I alight. Designed by George Papworth for the Dublin and Drogheda Railway (DDR) and built in 1853, Balbriggan railway station is a single-storey H-plan brown brick affair, with flanking Romanesque arches. The current stairway from hell take me across the tracks and provide a sweeping view of the beach and harbour, as well as a stairway to heaven: the former piers for the original footbridge. The beats to Talking Head’s Road to Nowhere start bubbling in the back of my mind. Beside the station building and its adjoining flightless steps stands the hammered stone and red brick base of the former, seemingly unadaptable, water tower. A more sympathetic contemporary alteration in the form of glass sliding doors announce
Read more

Sweet Dreams at Navan

Upon my first visit to Navan in 2018 in search of the railway station I was astounded that such a large town could have had its train service removed, when much smaller villages along the Sligo and Maynooth routes were still connected to the capital. Little did I know that two years later I would marry a Navan-native, settle in the area and pass the station every day, miffed and mournful at its wasted potential. The line opened with ambition 172 years ago in 1850, built by the Dublin and Drogheda Railway as a branch line from Drogheda to Oldcastle. Boyne Valley Railtour at Navan, 1977, Railway Preservation Society of Ireland My station safari was rewarded by passing over the extant railway tracks at the station’s level crossing – the line is still in operation for Tara Mines – and the heralding of the former station master’s house. A typical two-storey GNR example, its red brick man has been pebbled-dashed, disguising the polychromatic contrast intended for the, still exposed, yellow b
Read more

Paradise Lost: Howth Junction and Donaghmede

Alighting onto a post-apocalyptic concrete and steel abyss I surveyed the mesh of stairs, like an Escher lithograph, leading everywhere and nowhere simultaneously. “Where am I?” asked a bemused elderly lady I had stepped onto the platform with: “Howth Junction”. “Oh dear”. Relativity, M. C. Escher, Lithograph, 1953. Oh dear indeed. Where is the front of this ‘station’? I refuse to call it one: it is merely a set of stairs and a lift. Following signs to the exit I’m greeted with a dystopian Alice in Wonderland prospect of turning left into a car park and right along an overgrown, dirty footpath. I choose the latter; at least it might lead somewhere. The path to former station master's house, Howth Junction Dodging filth like the mad hatter, the elegant brick gables, stone lintels and terracotta chimney stacks of the former station master’s house can be spied amongst a wilderness of ivy, grass and razored-fencing. Forlornly neglected, the graceful merging of Classical ped
Read more