Burdekin (Macrossan rail bridge)
The former railway bridge that took the Great Northern Railway over the Burdekin River at Macrossan was added to the Queensland Heritage Register on 21 October 1992.
Henry Charles Stanley designed the metal truss bridge, which was built from c. 1896 to 1899 to replace a low-level road bridge that opened for traffic in mid-1879 and was converted for railway use after the Great Northern Railway reached Ravenswood Junction (Mingela) in November 1881. After floodwaters covered the existing structure to a depth of 17 metres in March 1890, the contract for a higher bridge and a 4.8-kilometre deviation at a projected cost of £52,143 was let in May 1896. Work on the bridge was completed in January 1899.
The completed bridge, three metres above the highest known flood level with six 76-metre steel spans, was one of the largest bridges in Queensland when completed, but its timber approaches meant trains crossing it were limited to an 8-ton axle load. Although the approaches were strengthened by 1937, allowing all classes of steam locomotives to cross, the advent of diesel locomotives in 1953 posed a new problem. Since the existing structure could not be economically strengthened to take two coupled diesel locomotives, work on a new bridge slightly upstream from the existing structure began in 1961. The new bridge, similar in construction to its predecessor, was opened in May 1964. Still, because the two structures were so close together, it was not feasible to remove the old bridge without risking damage to its replacement.
