Iron Roller

The first cycle ride of the Lothian and Borders Rally based at Morton Hall took place today, a seventy mile jaunt around the Pentland Hills. It was a good ride, albeit cold, damp and windy; for the first time in living memory, we had a tail wind down the Lang Whang (the literal translation being "the long bootlace); a wind up it is common enough, even across it happens fairly often but, down it was a cause for comment and celebration. In general, cyclists use the name to refer to the nearly twenty mile section from Currie, just outside Mbra, to Carnwath where there's a very good, if down-to-earth café known as "The Bakery" or "The Apple Pie," they were inundated today on account of a large number of cold and hungry cyclists.

The combination of the urgency on the ride due to its length, and the weather, meant that there was little time for blipping, so it was, that on the way back home I was searching for a suitable subject in the pouring rain. This iron roller was removed from the Bilston Glen Viaduct in 1999, there were a pair of them at one end of the bridge to accommodate the expansion of two and a half inches between its winter length and the summer one; the actual rollers are, or would have been, hidden under the bottom metal block, the nine holes each housing an axle. The two units were replaced for a total cost of nearly £150,000 after just over a hundred years of use.
The bridge is an impressive structure with a span of 330 feet at a height of 140 feet over the ravine, its girder structure is forty two feet deep and it carried a single track railway that provided a passenger service until 1933 and goods transport (coal) until 1969, since then it has been used as a cycle and foot path.