School Lane bridge on the Styal loop line

[montyburns56]

Is there anyone out there who has an in depth knowledge of the Styal Loop as I've been wondering exactly when (and how) the bridge over School Lane (Didsbury) was built? The line was completed in 1909 and at the time School Lane was a farm track which took a different route which didn't go under the railway. However in the 1930s when Didsbury was being developed the current School lane was rebuilt and diverted, but as this contemporary aerial photograph shows, there was no over bridge for the road. I can't find any reference online to it being built yet it must have been quite a feat of engineering to turn an embankment into a bridge on a running railway line. Are there any references in old railway magazines to it's construction? I did wonder if it was built during the war and the work was kept hush hush so as not to highlight a handy target for German bombers!

 

[Sir Felix Pole]

The 1936 25in OS Map (Revised 1934) shows the bridge, so built sometime in the intervening period.

School Lane

Kingsway was laid out in 1926-30 so I guess it was part of the eventual master plan for the whole area.

 

[Mcr Warrior]

What I don't quite follow is why, on the supposedly late-1930s era map linked to below, the Styal line railway through the area in question is still shown as "Railway in Course of Construction".

View map: Ordnance Survey, Cheshire X.SW (includes: Cheadle and Gatley; Manchester; Stockport.) - Ordnance Survey Six-inch England and Wales, 1842-1952

maps.nls.uk

 

[Gloster]

What I don't quite follow is why, on the supposedly late-1930s era map linked to below, the Styal line railway through the area in question is still shown as "Railway in Course of Construction".

View map: Ordnance Survey, Cheshire X.SW (includes: Cheadle and Gatley; Manchester; Stockport.) - Ordnance Survey Six-inch England and Wales, 1842-1952

maps.nls.uk

It says at the top ‘Revision of Cheshire 1907-08/Lancashire 1904-05 with additions in 1938’. Presumably they just added all the new streets and buildings, but didn’t alter the railway.

 

[stuving]

This is from the Todmorden & District News, published Friday, 8 December 1933, page 6. It does appear to answer the question, albeit by introducing a red herring in talking about the "widening" of a pre-existing bridge. Was there is small pedestrian tunnel there?

Contract For Local Firm.

As announced in our last issue a contract for the widening of School Lane Bridge, East Didsbury, Manchester, has been let by the L.M.S. Railway to Messrs, James Firth and Sons, of Stansfield Road, Todmorden.

The bridge is being built midway between the railway stations of East Didsbury and Burnage, in order to join two roads that finish abruptly on opposite sides of the railway embankment. They are exactly in line with one another, and when they are joined they will connect Manchester’s new suburbs in the Kingsway and Parr's. Wood Road areas. Manchester Corporation are responsible for the bridge being built, but the design and erection are in the hands of the London Midland and Scottish Railway Company and their contractors. Work has already started, and it is hoped that the road under the railway will be open by May. The whole of the superstructure of the bridge, consisting of two side girders weighing 22.5 tons each and the steel and concrete bridge floor, will be built on trestles on the Parr's Wood Road side of the line. Some Saturday night, after the last train has passed over the line, the 160-ton superstructure will be rolled into position, and the first train on the Sunday morning will pass over the new bridge. The making of the road underneath will then begin. The bridge will have a clear span of 50 feet, and while the abutments and wing walls are being built ready for the super-structure the railway will run over temporary steel beams spanning the trenches where the building is going on.

So what's new about ABC*, then?

*Accelerated Bridge Construction

 

[Sir Felix Pole]

This is from the Todmorden & District News, published Friday, 8 December 1933, page 6. It does appear to answer the question, albeit by introducing a red herring in talking about the "widening" of a pre-existing bridge. Was there is small pedestrian tunnel there?

So what's new about ABC*, then?

*Accelerated Bridge Construction

There doesn't appear to be an existing occupation bridge in the 1932 aerial shot at this location. South of East Didsbury station, however, Gawsworth Road was built at around the same time and a new bridge replaced an older occupation one - I wonder if the Todmorden firm did this job as well? Towards the Mersey there are two further occupation bridges which were not replaced and are still there - I use one when cutting through on my bike!

 

[stuving]

I can answer the question I asked above, and - weirdly - from the page before in the same newspaper!

A New Bridge Scheme.

MESSRS. J, M. FIRTH'S NEW CONTRACT

With reference to the contract which Messrs. J. M. Firth and Sons have secured for bridge construction for the Railway Co., the firm has written to us as follows :—
Dear Sir,-- ln your last week's issue, under local news, we noticed an item referring to a contract which the L.M. and S. Railway Company have placed with our firm, the description of which is not exactly correct.
The work is not the widening of an existing bridge, as there is not, at present, any bridge in School Lane, East Didsbury,
The contract is for the construction of an entirely new bridge to pass through the railway embankment, to provide a through road along School Lane to connect Kingsway with Parr’s Wood Road and to save residents and traffic having to make a long detour to get around from one district to the other.
The work consists of removing the present railway embankment, about 10,000 tons of excavation and building, on each side, concrete abutments faced with Accrington bricks.
The bridge will Be constructed of steel girders, erected and completed upon a temporary timber platform alongside the present main lines.
When all is complete and ready the railway traffic will be stopped one Saturday midnight, the present permanent way removed, and the new structure rolled into position.
The permanent way will then be replaced and opened again for railway traffic before noon on the Sunday.
The span of the bridge over road and footpath is 50ft., the width of bridge 34ft., and the total weight of bridge, when ready to roll in, will he about 250 tons.

The item being responded to there, printed on 1st December, was as implied by the item of 8th December - its first paragraph less the first six words. The remaining text of that later item also appeared in other papers, so I guess it was supplied by the LMSR in a press release.

== Doublepost prevention - post automatically merged: Today at 10:16 ==

You may wonder whether this engineering magic was performed exactly as promised. I can find only one report of how the work went in the British Newspaper Archive, and that suggests it was close but didn't quite match what Firths themselves said - line closed from midnight Saturday to fist train on Sunday. That never did seem realistic, when you think about it, and in practice it took eleven hours just to remove the top of the embankment. However, reopening for Monday morning's service is pretty good - by contemporary or modern standards.

From the Todmorden & District News, published Friday, 29 June 1934, page 8:

A RAILWAY ENGINEERING FEAT

MUCH local interest attaches to a railway engineering feat accomplished at Didsbury last Sunday in that the contractors for the work are Messrs. J. M. Firth and Sons. of Stansfield Road, Todmorden. It was the moving into position of a new railway bridge which will link School Lane and School Lane East by cutting through the Kingsway railway embankment. This will give a straight road from Kingsway to Chorlton, forming part of an arterial road which will ultimately run from Stockport to Manchester. The "little job" involved the closing of the railway section between Burnage and East Didsbury stations at eleven o'clock on Saturday night, the diversion of the mainline traffic, the provision of a bus link to secure continuance of the local services, twelve hours of rush labour in darkness, wind, and rain by about a hundred workmen, and the tackling of a variety of engineering problems.

The bridge itself, a steel structure with concrete deck and weighing over two hundred tons, had been built on trestles at the correct height by the embankment side. The abutments and wing walls to support it had been built in trenches cut through the embankment. But before the bridge could be pulled into position by two powerful winches, rail gangs had to remove the old permanent way and contractors' gangs bad to dig out two and a half feet of the clayey earth beneath—eleven hours' work in all. Then the engineers' men could get to work with the actual moving, bolting down to the abutments, and the building of the ballast walls. The bridge was built upon trestles on roller bearings, and the rolling of the bridge into position was, cf course, a somewhat difficult feat to accomplish in the short time allotted. All this was successfully accomplished under the supervision of Mr. Disley, the railway's resident engineer, and of the contractors, Messrs. Firth. The lines were eventually relaid and were ready for traffic on Monday morning.

Another month. making eight since the work began, will elapse before the embankment has been cut away and the road constructed under the bridge. Local opinion (states " The Manchester Guardian ") is unanimous that the Corporation never made a better £9.000 investment in its history than it has done in this bridge.

The only other report I found was from the Manchester Evening News, published Tuesday, 19 June 1934, page 7. That was from the week before, and has a "before" picture. That shows the new bridge deck built right next to the embankment, but at a significantly higher level. I assume it sits on rollers on steel rails (e.g. the flat tops of I-beams); these are extended, supported by the embankment still in place, and the deck pulled onto those extensions. It would then be lifted slightly by jacks to allow the rails to be pulled out, and lowered into position on its bearings. Or something like that!