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Sunday 20 September 2015

Maffra Line - Bridge over Rainbow Creek at Cowwarr

This bridge is a good example of what happens when you are too late and the original bridge gets replaced by a completely different structure.

On the northern outskirts of Cowwarr, after the station, the line crosses Rainbow Creek. Upstream from here there is a weir across the Thompson River, with Rainbow Creek also controlled by the weir. This is to create an irrigation feed to the farming properties on the plains. However Rainbow Creek can, at times of flood, become quite a beast, and the original wooden railway bridge was destroyed by floods some years back.

There is a rather nasty bend that causes severe scouring of the creek on the southern side, so to get the rail trail across the creek, a completely new, single span steel bridge was put in place. There is no trace left of the original wooden bridge, however we are lucky to have a photo of it from Darren Hodges.
Photo from the Darren Hodges collection

This, on the other hand, is it's rather ugly replacement.

 

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