Preserving Ireland's iconic railway viaducts

Abstract

Ireland's national railway system operator Iarnród Éireann has developed innovative repair and strengthening techniques to retain, preserve and extend the longevity of several of its aging bridges. Of those, three nineteenth-century structures rehabilitated in the past decade stand out as iconic structures in their own setting and will now continue to provide service into the foreseeable future. Innovative bespoke engineering, three-dimensional finite-element modelling techniques and laboratory research and testing were used to confirm the theoretical hypothesis. This achieved a significant increase in the lifespan of these structures that would otherwise have been deemed life-expired. This paper gives an overview of each of the projects, describing the existing structure and the challenges overcome in their design, repair and rehabilitation.