Paddys Rickle Bridge

Paddy's Rickle Bridge is the name of

1) a bridge which carries the B7076 (A74 until 1999) over the West Coast Main Line railway some two miles SE of Elvanfoot, one mile NW of Beattock Summit, and 11 miles north of Beattock village, in the Southern Uplands of Scotland;

2) a former fork interchange, just NW of the railway bridge, which existed between 1992 and 1999, and formed a temporary southern terminus of the northern stretch of M74/A74(M);

3) the road bridge, half a mile NW of the railway bridge, which formed part of the junction and which now carries the B7076 over the A74(M) without connection.

History

A railway bridge at this site dates from the construction of the Caledonian Railway in 1848.

The present railway bridge dates from 1959, when the previous bridge was replaced as an early element of the original A74 dualling.

Following the 1987 decision (see M74 and A74(M) History) to extend the M74 south from J12 to Carlisle, three sections were fast-tracked and opened in 1991 and 1992. The second of these, opened as A74(M) in August 1992, was the relatively short and isolated section known as Elvanfoot to Paddy's Rickle Bridge, which included a major bridge over the River Clyde at Elvanfoot, a nearby bridge over the A702 as part of J14, and the road bridge at Paddy's Rickle. This bridge helped to form a grade-separated fork junction, so that northbound traffic could continue onto the motorway or turn off onto the B7076, and southbound traffic from the B7076 could merge with the mainline where it ceased to be a motorway.

From November 1993, when the Nether Abington to Elvanfoot section opened, Paddy's Rickle Bridge junction was the southern end of a substantial stretch of motorway from Glasgow, which changed its name from M74 to A74(M) at J13.

The junction was abolished in spring 1999 when the 18-mile section of A74(M) southward to Cleuchbrae (J16) was opened. The road over the railway bridge then became B7076 and was reduced to single carriageway.