Camus Bridge over Mourne River, (former Railway Bridge), Camus & Seein TD, Strabane, Co Tyrone

Camus Bridge is an early 20th-century steel plate girder railway bridge spanning the River Mourne in an unspoiled rural setting, approximately 1.1 kilometres north-north-west of Victoria Bridge, with grassed banks and open pasture to either side. It sits roughly halfway between Strabane and Omagh on what was the 120-kilometre Great Northern Railway (Ireland) line from Portadown to Londonderry, and has been abandoned since the closure of this section of line in 1965.

The present bridge, erected around 1910, is the third structure on this site and replaced a cast-iron girder trellis bridge, which had itself replaced the original timber bridge put up by the Londonderry and Enniskillen Railway Company around 1850. It was constructed by Alexander Findlay and Company of Motherwell, an engineering firm founded in 1888 that specialised in steel bridgework. Tragically, one of Findlay's employees, Thomas Neeson of Sion Mills, was drowned while working on the bridge in November 1911.

The bridge is aligned north to south and consists of five spans, carried on two main-span riveted steel plate girders with a secondary internal plate girder structure supporting the road bed, which rests on longitudinal baulk sleepers. Although the running rails have been removed, the raised horizontal check rails and their support structure remain in place. The bridge is supported on five pairs of circular steel, concrete-filled piers, each with a profiled head and tied by a steel cross brace. At each embankment there is an abutment of rock-faced basalt, built to courses and finished with a moulded stone string course at carriageway level. Tooled ashlar piers are present at the east abutment only, at both ends of the bridge. At the south end, the flat capstone is inscribed "CAMUS BRIDGE". Although the bridge span and supporting piers are built for a single track, the abutments were constructed to accommodate double track. The north approach embankment remains in place, but the southern approach embankment has been removed and the southern abutment is now retained to the cavity by shuttered concrete. A high-level road overbridge stands approximately 90 metres south of the southern abutment, and the railway roadbed and cutting are visible beyond.

The bridge is historically significant as a rare surviving example of a steel railway bridge — only four others are listed in Northern Ireland — and as much of the physical evidence of the railway line has now disappeared, Camus Bridge is a particularly intact and authentic example. It shares group value with the nearby Breen Bridge, which has similar constructional elements. The progression from timber to cast iron to riveted steel plate girder construction at this single site reflects the broader technological advancement in structural engineering during the 19th and early 20th centuries.

The railway's history begins with the Londonderry and Enniskillen Railway Company, incorporated in 1845 and authorised to construct a single-track line southwards from Londonderry. Work began shortly afterwards and by April 1847 the line had reached Strabane, at a construction cost of approximately £10,000 per mile. The first section proved difficult commercially due to the shortness of the line, storm damage, and competition from the Strabane Canal and Foyle Navigation. It was only with the extension to Omagh in 1852, Fintona in 1853, and Enniskillen in 1854 that the full benefits became apparent, with Omagh and Strabane in particular emerging as major market centres from which goods could be conveyed northwards to the port of Londonderry, and with wider commercial advantages to the agricultural lands — both arable and pastoral — lying along the valleys of the Foyle, its headstreams and tributaries, and the flanking upland areas to east and west. In 1860 the Londonderry and Enniskillen Railway was leased to the Dundalk and Enniskillen Railway Company, subsequently renamed the Irish North Western Railway Company, for 99 years. The Irish North Western Railway was absorbed by the Northern Railway Company on 1 January 1876, which in turn merged with the Ulster Railway Company on 1 April 1876 to form the Great Northern Railway Company (Ireland). During the post-war period the railways faced increasing competition from road transport. In 1953 the Great Northern Railway ceased to exist as a separate and independent company when the entire system was acquired jointly by the Governments of Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland, operated by a Board representing both governments. In 1958 the greatly diminished portion of the former Great Northern system lying within Northern Ireland passed under the absolute control of the Ulster Transport Authority, and a period of contraction followed in which many lines deemed unremunerative were closed.

The bridge first appears, captioned, on the second edition Ordnance Survey map of 1855 as part of the Londonderry and Enniskillen Railway. By the third edition of 1905 the line is named the Great Northern Railway (Ireland), reflecting the amalgamations that had taken place in the intervening decades. The townland names are of Irish origin: Camus derives from the Irish "Camas," meaning river bend, and Seein from "Sian," meaning fairy mound.