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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 


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