CHAP. XII. 



THE SANKEY VIADUCT. 



233 



SANKEY VIADUCT [By Percival Skelton.] 



width, economizing headway, and introducing the use 

 of a new material of the greatest possible value to the 

 railway engineer. The bridges of masonry upon the 

 line were of many kinds ; several of them askew bridges, 

 and others, such as those at Newton and over the Irwell 

 at Manchester, were straight and of considerable dimen- 

 sions. But the principal piece of masonry on the line 

 was the Sankey viaduct. 



This fine work is principally of brick, with stone 

 facings. It consists of nine arches of fifty feet span 

 each. The massive piers are supported on two hundred 

 piles driven deep into the soil ; and they rise to a great 

 height, the coping of the parapet being seventy feet 

 above the level of the valley, in which flow the Sankey 

 brook and canal. Its total cost was about 45,000. 



