Brick made arched bridges, culverts, tunnels along the Railways in 19th century Sri Lanka

Abstract

In ancient times European Countries usually added arch shapes for their religious buildings palaces, and forts. In the first half of the 19th Century, Britain was using the arch to make roadways buildup bridges, tunnels, culverts, over toppings continuing the previous tradition. From them, one of a leading methodology to make such buildings was brick masonry. After introducing railway traffic in 1820s, they followed road way techniques in making their buildings such as tunnels, bridges, culverts etc. According to the motherland, the pioneer engineers and contractors who are from Britain made brick arch buildings to the railways in their crown colony of Ceylon. In Sri Lanka the earliest brick arched railway monuments have been built along the Colombo- Kandy Railway which is the first and thence in Kandy- Matale Line. These are belong to 1865-66, and 1879-80 years. Most of them are small culverts and short tunnels on the roadway over toppings. When transporting heavy loaded carriages, wagons and high power engines running along the tracks and long trains, some problems arose regarding the strength of brick related structures. As a result brick structures were replaced with concrete, iron and solid stone structures. The influence from widening as to two tracks some of them were either joined to new structures or demolished. In present, there are very small number of brick made railway monuments, but in still service at main heavy traffic roadways in the Country. These important historic events of 19th century are still not being discussed in archaeological studies. In this study will effectuate and insists on protection of architectural heritage which was fixed in 19th century to the main stream of brick monuments come from past.