Prince Alfred Bridge

About

The Prince Alfred Bridge is a wrought iron truss and timber beam road bridge over the Murrumbidgee River and its floodplain at Middleton Drive, Gundagai, Cootamundra-Gundagai Regional Council, New South Wales, Australia. The name originally applied to the iron truss bridge over the river and some 800 metres of timber beam bridge across the floodplain but most of the timber beam sections have been demolished. The heritage-listed road bridge was designed by William Christopher Bennett and built from 1864 to 1867 by Francis Bell. It is also known as Prince Alfred Bridge – Iron Road Bridge and Iron Bridge over Murrumbidgee River at Gundagai. The iron bridge is owned by Transport for NSW and the timber viaduct was owned by Crown Lands. The bridge was added to the New South Wales State Heritage Register on 5 July 2019 and on the (now defunct) Register of the National Estate on 21 March 1978. In 1977, the 1,143-metre-long (3, 750 ft) Sheahan Bridge replaced the Prince Alfred Bridge as the Hume Highway crossing of the Murrumbidgee River. The Sheahan Bridge was duplicated in 2010. Since the opening of the Sheahan Bridge, the Prince Alfred Bridge has served local traffic only. The timber spans on the Prince Alfred Bridge deteriorated to such an extent that the 1896 side ramp had to be reinstated, leaving most of the northern approach disused, after which it deteriorated to the point where

Adapted from Wikipedia (CC BY-SA). Photography via Wikimedia Commons.