Published Resources Details
Conference Paper
- Title
- The Hawkesbury River Railway Bridge (1886-1946)
- In
- Engineering Conference Newcastle: Engineering Towards the 21st Century; Conference Papers
- Imprint
- Institution of Engineers, Australia, Barton, Australian Capital Territory, 1983, pp. 36-42
- ISBN/ISSN
- 0858251825
- Url
- https://search.informit.org/doi/10.3316/informit.487978291494165
- Abstract
The Hawkesbury River Bridge and the Woy Woy Tunnel were the major works on the Sydney to Newcastle railway, which itself was of major importance to colonial Australia. With the completion of the bridge in 1889 and the line to Newcastle, the colonies of South Australia, Victoria, New South Wales and Queensland had a continuous rail link. Despite the inconvenience of the breaks in gauge, it was possible to travel by rail from Adelaide to Brisbane, a distance of 2860 km, 400 km more than London to Istanbul. The bridge was 883 m long and was the largest project of its type in the Southern Hemisphere. It was the subject of world wide tenders won by an American contractor, and was well reported in the international engineering journals. The foundations proved to be the most difficult phase of the work, and were eventually the main reason for replacing the bridge in 1946. The paper reviews the details which made the original bridge a high point of colonial bridge engineering, and now make it worthy of a meritorious place in our engineering heritage, albeit posthumously.
Related Published resources
isPartOf
- Engineering Conference Newcastle: Engineering Towards the 21st Century; Conference Papers (Barton, Australian Capital Territory: Institution of Engineers, Australia, 1983), 291 pp, https://search.informit.org/doi/book/10.3316/informit.0858251825. Details