Railway Bridge, Carnagat Rd, Newry, Co Armagh

This railway bridge, built between 1840 and 1859, carries the main Belfast to Dublin double-track railway over Carnagat Road. It is noted for its high standard of design and execution and its associations with William Dargan, often considered the "father" of Irish railways, and Sir John Macneill. The bridge’s structure is of particular industrial archaeological interest.

The bridge is comprised of a single semicircular span constructed throughout of granodiorite. The soffit and abutments are of ashlar. The faces of the blocks that make up the abutments are convex, creating a bulbous finish. The quarry-faced voussoirs of the arch have tooled edges and splay outwards across the spandrels. Above this is a rusticated ashlar string course, and above that, low concrete parapets with two-bar galvanised metal safety railings. The wing walls are built of irregularly-coursed squared rubble, topped with rusticated stone and terminating in square piers with tooled quoins. These piers are surmounted by pyramidal caps. A 15-foot height warning triangle is fixed to the east face of the bridge. The platband additions are degrading.

The bridge was built in 1851 by William Dargan for the Dublin & Belfast Junction Railway Company (D&BJ) to a design by Sir John Macneill. The line opened in 1852 with the completion of the Craigmore Viaduct. The D&BJ merged with the Dublin & Drogheda Railway Co in 1875 and subsequently became part of the Great Northern Railway (Ireland) in 1876.