wrinkly wrote: ↑Wed Sep 06, 2023 20:08
RJDG14 wrote: ↑Wed Sep 06, 2023 18:32
Does that photo show the B7076/B7078 under construction to the right of the old A74, with this section looking to have had an online motorway upgrade?
Yes, that's looking south a few miles north of Beattock. On most of that section the motorway was created by symmetric widening of the A74 with a new B7076 to the west, but here there's the additional factor that an S curve in the previous alignment is being smoothed out.
Some of the traffic in that photo looks to be using what was going to be the motorway hard shoulder.
Yes, there was a good deal of that sort of thing in places.
I'm curious if anyone here knows how many bridges over the road existed on the pre-motorway A74 between Gretna and Blackwood? There were several on the Carlisle to Gretna bit but I think there were fewer further north. I'm not counting bridges where the road went over something. These would be the overbridges that I can name between north of Gretna and Blackwood based on the SABRE Maps information:
Possible one at the junction to the north of Gretna (SABRE Maps shows its newest revision as an unfinished junction with what looks like an overbridge already in place)
Two immediately north of Gretna
One at the central Kirkpatrick Fleming junction and one at the northern junction
One at the Eaglesfield junction (this survives to this day)
One at Ecclefechan
Three at Lockerbie; this took the form of one at all 3 grade separated junctions
The bridge under the railway just south of the former split carriageway section
One at Crawford (I think this carried a footpath or farm/maintenance road and is still standing today)
Two at Kirkmuirhill
This equates to, I think, 13 in total, which isn't many for a roughly 65 mile stretch of road.
I'll check this later.
Nearly all of the overbridges look to have been on stretches that received offline upgrades rather than those which received online dualling.
In terms of grade separated junctions in order from Gretna to the original end of the M74, these were the ones that I believe it had (based on old maps):
Gretna (A75) (limited access)
Gretna north (limited access)
Kirkpatrick Fleming south (limited access)
Kirkpatrick Fleming central (limited access)
Kirkpatrick Fleming north (limited access)
Eaglesfield
Ecclefechan south (limited access)
Ecclefechan north (limited access)
Lockerbie south (limited access)
Lockerbie central (limited access)
Lockerbie north (limited access)
Beattock south (limited access, unless you count an access road for northbound traffic just south of it)
Beattock north
Abington (limited access)
Lesmahagow
Kirkmuirhill central (limited access)
Kirkmuirhill north (limited access)
Only three of the junctions, Beattock north, Eaglesfield and Lesmahagow, looked to be full access GSJs. Nearly all of the GSJs were on bypass sections as opposed to the online parts which generally had at-grade junctions.