February 24, 2008Canton Viaduct, Canton Junction, MA
This railroad viaduct was opened in 1835 by the Boston and Providence Railroad, and it has been used for rail traffic over the Canton River ever since. I have been on top of the viaduct in the past, during trips on the MBTA Commuter Rail from Boston to Providence, but I have never seen the 70 foot-tall, 615 foot-long structure from river level.
The structure is actually two walls, 5 feet thick, with a five-foot thick space between them. Buttresses divide this space into 21 individual compartments of different sizes depending on their locations along the viaduct. The Canton River flows through 6 small arches on one side of the wall, and two larger arches have since been cut to allow road traffic through and area on the opposite side of the wall.
Two other viaducts of similar design exist elsewhere in the world - Russia, of all places. There are conflicting reports online about this, however. One site says that the designer of the Canton Viaduct was summoned to Russia in 1842 by Tsar Nicholas I to design two similar passes on a railroad being built between St. Petersburg and Moscow. Wikipedia says that Tsar Alexander II sent workers to Canton in the latter half of the 19th Century to draw up plans for two bridges for the Trans-Siberian Railway. Either way, both websites claim that there are only three railroad viaducts of such design in the world today.
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