Description
The old trestle bridge over Bourne Creek, 117 km southeast from Melbourne on the Bass Highway just out of the small town of Kilcunda.
The Kilcunda Bridge was constructed in 1911 for the Victorian Railways as part of the Woolamai-Wonthaggi railway.It is a single-track fifteen span all-timber railway bridge, with a total deck length of 91 metres and a maximum height of twelve metres. Kilcunda Bridge came into use with the opening to traffic of the permanent coal-fields railway in 1911. The line was closed in 1978. The bridge is now part of the Bass Coast Shire Rail Trail, opened c. 2006.
Kilcunda Bridge is technically significant because of its unusual pier structure. It was originally built with angled two-pile timber piers, an innovation on the earlier tradition of vertical two-pile piers. Because of the unusually heavy haulage to which this bridge was subject, two more vertical timber piles were later added to the centre section of each pier, distinguishing these tall piers from those of other surviving timber bridges. Beam spans were also strengthened by adding an extra timber beam under each side to give a total of six beams per span: a very unusual feature.
High Dynamic Range tone mapped image from 22 Mega Pixel digital file Canon 5D Mk 11.
This image was taken in 12 January 2011
Image size for download is 5616 px X 2653 px as TIFF or JPEG file.
