Gambles Railway Bridge Newry Canal towpath Killybodagh Road Newry BT35 6TG

Gambles Railway Bridge is a skew single-span metal girder bridge carrying the main Belfast to Dublin railway over the Newry Canal and its parallel towpath, located approximately 2 miles south of Poyntzpass near Newry, in the townland of Killybodagh. It was erected in 1850 to 1851 by the Dublin and Belfast Junction Railway Company, and is accessible via the canal towpath.

The bridge comprises two pairs of cross-braced welded-steel beams running north to south, with metal decking above carrying ballast and a double-track railway line. This span was a replacement installed in the 1990s. The abutments are built of squared and rock-faced granite blocks laid in regular courses, with tooled edges to the quoins. The wing walls are of squared granite blocks laid in a random pattern, coped with sandstone, and run diagonally down from the span to terminate in low piers. The towpath passes beneath the span on the west side of the canal, where the facing is of random rubble. There is also a beam along the east abutment, though access to it is blocked by stonework at both ends; the southern obstruction is a single rusticated block of granite.

The bridge does not meet the criteria for listing because the abutments and wing walls are already protected through scheduling, and the original deck has been replaced.

The bridge was built as part of the construction of the Dublin and Belfast Junction Railway, incorporated by Act of Parliament in 1845 to connect the existing termini at Drogheda, served by the Dublin and Drogheda Railway, and Portadown, served by the Ulster Railway, thus completing a continuous rail link between Dublin and Belfast. The line passed to the west of Newry. Work progressed northward from Drogheda and had reached Killeen, south of Newry, by July 1850. A separate push southward from Portadown to Goraghwood was made between 1850 and 1851, during which this bridge was constructed. The full section between Mullaghglass, south of Goraghwood, and Portadown opened to the public on 6th January 1852. The complete line from Drogheda to Portadown did not open until June 1852, following completion of the Craigmore Viaduct, and the first passenger train crossed the Boyne Viaduct in June 1853, finally completing the Dublin to Belfast route. The Boyne Viaduct's permanent structure was completed in April 1855, having initially been served by a temporary structure.

Responsibility for the design of this bridge and others on the line rested with the Engineer-in-Chief, Sir John Macneill (1793–1880), and his District Engineer James Barton (1826–1913), with possible contributions from resident engineers. Macneill was a Louth-born former pupil of Thomas Telford who had worked in England and Scotland before being recruited by the Irish Railway Commissioners to survey and lay out the railway system in northern Ireland. He was subsequently chief engineer to numerous Irish railways, received a knighthood following his work on the Dublin to Drogheda line, and was described in the press as the "King of the Irish Railways." He held the professorship of Civil Engineering at Trinity College Dublin from 1842 to 1852, and was responsible for a wide range of major engineering works, including the Craigmore Viaduct, the Egyptian Arch, and the Boyne Viaduct, the last of which has been described as "probably the greatest single engineering achievement in Victorian Ireland." He also designed a bridge over the Royal Canal that was the first iron lattice bridge in the United Kingdom, and built several timber viaducts with masonry abutments for the Dublin and Drogheda Railway.

James Barton had been a student of Macneill's at Trinity College and was appointed as his deputy after Macneill's other commitments, particularly on the Great Southern and Western Railway from Dublin to Cork, led to neglect of his obligations to the Dublin and Belfast Junction Railway Board. Barton made important contributions to the design of the Boyne Viaduct alongside resident engineers Alexander Schaw and William Powell, though the relative contributions of the various engineers involved were a matter of some controversy after the viaduct opened. Barton later became a consultant to numerous railway companies, mostly in the north, and his obituary named him "one of the pioneers of Irish Railway construction and development." Resident engineer William Powell exhibited a ground plan of the Dublin and Belfast Junction Railway with elevations of the principal bridges and viaducts at the Royal Hibernian Academy in 1852.

The contractor for the Portadown to Goraghwood section of the line, Contract No. 6, was the Carlow-born William Dargan (1799–1867), a celebrated building contractor and railway entrepreneur and also a former pupil of Thomas Telford. Dargan had won the contract for Ireland's first railway, the Dublin and Kingstown, in 1834, and his success there enabled him to secure a substantial share of Irish railway construction contracts during the 1840s and 1850s. He was responsible for numerous roads, railways, canals, and docks across Ireland and Britain. The broader line between Drogheda and Portadown was divided into six separate contracts, with various contractors employed across these sections.

In August 1850, Macneill reported to the Dublin and Belfast Junction Railway Company that five of the bridges on the Goraghwood to Portadown section were nearly completed except for their parapets, and three others were well advanced. By August 1851 he reported that all bridges between Craigmore and Portadown, except one over the Cusher River, had been completed. The Dublin and Belfast Junction Railway was amalgamated into the Great Northern Railway (Ireland) in 1876, and was ultimately taken over by Northern Ireland Railways, a publicly owned train operator, in the 1960s.