Bridge No18, East of Leap Lane, Railway Bridge, Omagh, Co Tyrone

Bridge No. 18, East of Leap Lane, Railway Bridge, Omagh

This triple-span stone railway bridge was erected around 1850 as part of the Portadown, Dungannon and Omagh Railway line. Now disused, it carried the Great Northern Railway's Omagh-Enniskillen branch over the Camowen River on an east-west axis. The bridge is a robust example of mid-19th-century railway engineering and remains a significant landmark in the locality.

The structure comprises three semicircular arches formed in rock-faced ashlar stone voussoirs with tooled stone ashlar soffits. The arches rest on two concrete footings that form V-cutwaters. Above the arches, random coursed rock-faced stone ashlar spandrels rise to rock-faced stone coping topped with a steel railing. At either end of the bridge, full-height tapering piers of rock-faced stone ashlar are surmounted by stone coping. The carriageway, now overgrown, is enclosed on both sides by simple steel railing.

The railway line first appears on the second edition Ordnance Survey map of 1853, captioned as the "Portadown, Dungannon and Omagh Railway". In November 1856, the Portadown & Dungannon Railway Company sought authority to extend their line to Omagh and lease it to the Ulster Railway Company. Royal Assent was granted in August 1857 to the Portadown, Dungannon and Omagh Junction Railway Company. The 27-mile single-track line from Dungannon to Omagh was constructed with £100,000 of share capital and £33,000 of loans. Despite substantial engineering challenges, including driving a half-mile single-track tunnel through Windmill Hill, the line was completed across the south Sperrins moorlands through Pomeroy, Carrickmore, Sixmilecross and Beragh to Omagh, where it connected with the Londonderry & Enniskillen Railway on 2 September 1861. From completion, the 41-mile line from Portadown to Omagh was leased to the Ulster Railway Company for 999 years at a minimum rate of £10,000 per annum. The Ulster Railway was taken over by the Northern Railway Company on 1 April 1876, merging to form the Great Northern Railway Company (Ireland). By the third edition Ordnance Survey map of 1906, the line is captioned as the "GNR (Portadown and Londonderry Branch)".

The bridge exhibits high-quality stone masonry and proportions characteristic of the period, and its tall arches form a graceful composition of both industrial and architectural significance.