With exams now finally over it's back to strolling around N. Wales (weather permitting) with my camera & trusty tape measure.
This bridge, known locally as "Bont Charlie" is located south of the small village of Bethel roughly halfway between Bangor & Caernarfon. It was built (date unknown) to carry a chartered public footpath over the 4ft gauge Padarn Railway which transported finished slates from the Dinorwic Slate Quarry to an incline at Pen-Scoins, here the slates were lowered from a drum house to the port exchange sidings at Y Felinheli from where they would be loaded onto all manor of vessels & shipped all over the world.
The line under the bridge was single & there would be, at most, 5 trains per day each way, with good crossing visibility afforded from both directions. However the power of Dinorwic Quarry owner, Padarn Railway owner & local land-owner Sir Charles Assheton-Smith of the Vaynol Estate, could not sway parliamentary regulation which required the Padarn Railway to provide a safe means for traversing the line by foot at the intersection of the railway with the chartered public footpath, hence the bridge was constructed over the line at this point.
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| Aerial Image 1. Satellite imagery courtesy of Google Earth showing the location of the bridge south of Bethel, (outlined by the red cricle). The now disused & overgrown track bed of the 4ft gauge Padarn Railway can be seen running north to south with the footpath crossing from east to west. |
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| Photograph 1. Ground level photograph of the bridge in a very overgrown & somewhat sorry looking state, this view is looking south-west. (05/05/2013) |
The model was created accurately to scale in Autodesk 3DS Max taking around 1 afternoon to complete & stands at 1,394 polys or 868 verts. Here are a couple of HD (1920 x 1080) clay renders of the basic finished shape.
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| Render 1. Ground level view looking north to south under the bridge, as seen by any approaching trains. |
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| Render 2. Birds eye view. |
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| Render 3. Birds eye view looking east to west showing the detail of the footpath steps. |
