Our former wonder of the world claimed many lives
IT could be five years before scheduled maintenance tackles the drainage problem on Stockport railway viaduct which is clogged with trackbed rubble, causing lime stains on the sides of the 111ft high grade two star town centre landmark.
The viaduct was the wonder of the world when completed in 1842, comprising 11 million bricks, erected by 600 workers slaving day and night over two years and finally linked Manchester with London by railway.
It was described by Mrs Gaskell in her novel North and South, also Howard Spring in his novel Fame is the Spur and Frederick Engels in his treatise on conditions of the English working class.
“Stockport is the duskiest, smokiest hole and looks from the viaduct excessively repellent.
“I do not remember to have seen so many cellars used as dwellings in any other town.”
By 1885 as many as 250 passenger trains and 140 goods trains passed daily over the twin track viaduct.
So the railway company proposed an iron extension, adding two extra tracks to ease congestion.
The Borough Surveyor objected to iron, so a brick viaduct was built alongside, opening in 1888.
In its life the viaduct has claimed many lives. Workmen were killed when heavy stones were being lifted and the rope mechanism broke.
One lamplighter fell to his death in the river from scaffolding, yet another swam to the bank, rested for a while then resumed work!
A steam crane driver was killed when his crane collapsed.
The biggest single loss of life was caused by a train crash in fog in November 1948. Five passengers were killed when another train ploughed into theirs on the viaduct and 27 were seriously injured.
During WW2 a large bomb fell on Heaton Norris station goods yard, but only small incendiaries hit the viaduct.
My old news editor at the Stockport Advertiser, Norman Wright a wartime fireman, told me the fire brigade expected a major incident at the viaduct because cotton bales had been used as a base for some of the piers (perhaps as coffer dams near the river?).
This might explain the movement in some of the arches described as a ‘design fault’ but which he attributed to slow internal combustion!
When HS2 is built with a tunnel under Altrincham to Manchester in the 2030s, a bypassed Stockport viaduct will become a railway backwater. »»Contact me via Stockport Heritage Magazine’s website and browse some back copies, there are 90 plus still on screen to choose from. www.stockportheritagemagazine.co.uk