GWR Route: Banbury to Wolverhampton

Olton Station: gwro1559

An official photograph of the four road braced framework girder bridge built to carry the GWR's new widened lines over the main Birmingham Road. As part of the quadrupling of the Birmingham Main Line, which took place between 1930 and 1933, the bridge over the Warwick Road adjacent to Olton Station needed to be replaced. Owing to the road here being widened from 36 feet to 60 feet and crossing under the railway at an angle, it was necessary to construct a 152 foot skew span steel underbridge at this location. Five open lattice girders with parrallel booms 175 foot long overall and 20 feet high were installed on new abutments made from mass concrete encasing old steel rails as reinforcement.

The use of the braced framework truss design provided good structual strength, with minimal deformation under load, while maintaining a relatively low total wieght. Despite this each of the five girders wieghed approximately 160 tons, which together with the steel plate flooring, cross girders and rail bearers, resulted in the whole bridge containing nearly 1,000 tons of steel. Four sets of three lattice steel cross bracings were provided between the tops of the girders to increase lateral support (Board of Trade Regulations required all bridges to be designed to resist a wind pressure of 56lb per sq foot). The bridge construction work was undertaken by Cleveland Bridge & Engineering Co. Ltd. from Darlington and the picture shows the new bridge in 1933.

Robert Ferris

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