This large book, prepared in the 1870’s by the Midland Railway, comprises 40 pages of detailed ink and water-colour civil engineering drawings of the railway’s structures.
Routinely used as a source of reference for the construction and maintenance of the railway, the book lay forgotten after closure and was in a sorry state when it came to light. Expert conservation work has since restored the book close to its original condition.
The conservation work was painstakingly carried out over several months. Each page was carefully removed from the binding and washed. Frayed edges of the original high-quality paper were repaired with Japanese plant-based paper. Smudges were removed wherever possible. The book itself was then restored and a new protective case produced.
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This image was kindly supplied by the Midland Railway Study Centre in Derby. It is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License – see http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/.
The Book of Bridges is an important historical document of great local interest, all the more so given the aspirations to reopen the railway from Garsdale to Hawes, the only branch line of the Settle to Carlisle route. The costs of the conservation were met by both public and private contributions to a fund-raising appeal.