At Ribblehead

Today’s dramatic sky at the world famous 1875 Victorian railway viaduct at Ribblehead. This is the first visit this year that we’ve made to Ribblehead Viaduct on the bleak and isolated Blea Moor, North Yorkshire when we’ve actually experienced sunshine. Last week and the week before it was misty, dull, rainy, miserable and downright cold. Unfortunately the steam train wasn’t running today.
Ribblehead Viaduct, also known as Batty Moss Railway Viaduct, high on Blea Moor, was constructed between 1870 and 1874. It is 400m (440 yds) long, the longest, largest and most impressive of the viaducts on the Settle-Carlisle line. There are 24 segmental arches, each with a 14m (45ft) span, on battered piers, some of which have been cased in concrete, others with iron straps. At its highest point it is 32m(104ft) above the valley floor. It was designed by engineer John Sydney Crossley and build by 1000 navvies who lived with their families in the harshest of conditions in the hastily constructed shanty towns that grew up around the construction site. 100 navvies were killed during its construction, and due to the poor living conditions, the viaduct claimed the deaths of women and children as well. There are 200 burials in a graveyard in Chapel-le-Dale. So bleak and windswept is the moor and so high is the viaduct that as late as 1964, several brand new cars being carried on a freight train crossing the viaduct were blown off the freight wagons carrying them and landed on the ground beneath the viaduct.
In the 1980s British Rail attempted to close this line, one of three main north-south lines in the country, claiming that the viaduct was unsafe and would be too expensive to repair. There was a public outcry and various protests and petitions generated. Eventually that plan was dropped. The viaduct, along with the rest of the line, was repaired and is now part of the general rail network