Kafue Railway Bridge
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The Kafue Railway Bridge was built to carry the Livingstone to Lusaka railway line in what is now Zambia over the Kafue River in 1906. It is a steel girder truss bridge of 13 spans each of 33 m supported on concrete piers. It was built for Mashonaland Railways, later merged into Rhodesian Railways which operated the line from 1927[1] until succeeded in Zambia by Zambia Railways in 1966.
With a length of 427 m the Kafue Railway Bridge was the longest bridge on the Rhodesian Railways network.[1] It includes nearly 2 km of embankments raised about 7 m where the line crosses the river's wider rainy season channel, and a lower embankment about 15 km long where it crosses the river's the shallower floodplain to the south-west of the bridge.[2]
The town of Kafue is at the bridge's northern end and the Kafue Bridge on the Great North Road is 9 km downstream.[2]
[edit] References
- ^ a b Horizon Magazine on-line: "Zambia's Second Industry", February 1965. Accessed 21 March 2007.
- ^ a b Google Earth accessed 2007. The bridge is visible at decimal latitude/longitude -15.7876, 28.1766.
