CLARENCE BRIDGE THREATENED AGAIN

Press, Volume CVI, Issue 31128, 3 August 1966, Page 12

CLARENCE BRIDGE THREATENED AGAIN

(New Zealand Press Association)

BLENHEIM, August 2.

But for the protection of the recently constructed groynes 100 yards upstream of the South Island main trunk railway bridge over the Clarence river, the wooden piers holding up the 90 feet of track on the southern end of the bridge, washed out by the swollen river at the end of May, would almost certainly have gone again on Sunday night.

As it was, six old railway wagons, filled with boulders, and part of a chain of 83 waggons lashed together by wire rope to form a protective buttress at the base of the rebuilt bridge abutment, toppled into the river, though still held to the others by the wire ropes.

The river had eaten out the soft fill beneath the waggons causing them to sink. When the river level drops, the waggons will be hauled back, the foundations rebuilt, and the waggons replaced in their former positions. Though the Clarence river, 56 miles south of Blenheim, is not running as high as it was when the Marlborough east coast was lashed with a southerly at the end of May, yesterday afternoon it was topping the bottom row of railway waggons, which before Sunday night were more than 12 feet clear of the river. A If inch rainfall on Saturday pushed up the river level. A gang of men has been working on the protection work almost continuously since the May flood cut the bridge. As well as being filled with

boulders, the waggons are being grouted with concrete and so far 24 of the 83 have been filled. None of these was damaged, but the opinion was expressed yesterday that if the work had been completed, there would have ’been no threat to the bridge.