Three Bridges

You could probably call four bridges but one of them had been demolished. I had been meaning to get out and update my photos on the progress of the Spring farm bridge near Goring but due to other commitments I have not been out till today. Spring Farm Bridge was due to be demolished a year ago but due to time constraints it was put off and over Christmas demolished with along as I found out the one at Purley near Reading. This came as a shock because I thought the local residents had preservation order on it. I felt it was worth while going out to record the progress on these two plus one at Lower Basildon which I had noticed while going past on the train had been worked on. First up was Spring Farm which I was hoping had not had the sections put in, I was not disappointed. The bridge had been cleared of rubble and was awaiting the support plates to be fitted for the bridge sections, it looked strangely naked with no arches for trains to go under and no more would smoke billow from under them like in days past . From there it was onto Lower Basildon with a quick stop off at Cleeve to see what was there to Geograph in the future and a quick look round the bridge there to bag a Benchmark . Stopping off outside the entrance to the site at Lower Basildon showed the new bridge there. The old one had been removed and the new one looked to have been fitted higher that the old one . The bridge gives access to the farm and old church there but must have been too low for the new goods wagons which Network rail will use . Once I had finished it was off to Purley where I knew the sections were in place. This bridge must have had the preservation order over turned and it serviced Scrace's and Westbury Farm so had little traffic using it . It was also the smaller of the three bridges along that cutting . Only the barge bases remained and new bearing plates had been fitted along with the new bridge sections . A footbridge had been erected beside the old bridge for local people to use so made a good platform to get a few photo's from. I think this completes the work that has gone on along the section from Reading to Oxford. I have not documented all of them as I only found out about the removals after and the Reading Station development is a whole different ball game which I don't have time to do but would love to. The next thing to do will be to write an article on on the work which has been done in the last two years. I will update this blog with photo's in the next week but I felt I needed to get the year off to a good start blog wise. Link