PIECE-BY-PIECE REBUILD FOR BARMOUTH

It was being famously munched by marine shipworms in the 1980s, is now over 150 years old… and it’s about to be repaired/ replaced, piece-by-piece.

I’m talking about Barmouth Bridge, the nearly half-mile viaduct across the Mawddach estuary on the Cambrian. It hasn’t carried steam in a decade now – not because of concern over the structure, but due to the introduction of electronic signalling in 2011.

Barmouth is Grade II-listed, and the £25m rebuilding project isn’t expected to be finished until winter 2022/2023. Between now and then three complete closures are planned (the first this October/November), after which much of the structure will actually be new.

The bridge will stay at Route Availability 5, as now – enough to accommodate a ‘Black Five’ – with a 20mph speed limit for ‘Sprinters’ and 10mph for locomotive-hauled trains.

So is steam’s banishment from the Cambrian forever? Maybe not – because a solution for steam to use European Train Control System is bound up in the project to put the in-cab signalling on the East Coast Main Line, a project that’s now moving forward. And that, if you fitted the kit to something like a ‘Black Five’ (or even better, a ‘Manor’…) might unlock the railway around the western Welsh coast too…