On 16/01/17 19:49, Basil Jet wrote:

The new bridge allowing room for OLE on the Goblin opened a while back.

Given that cost-cutting measures on the Borders Railway in Scotland led
to it having several bridges that only allow a single track beneath
them, I was astonished to see that the Wightman Road bridge looks to be
long enough for three tracks.

Watching videos in Youtube, the adjacent ECML bridge has a span over
both Goblin tracks and an extra unused span on the north side seemingly
wide enough for an extra track, and the old Wightman Road bridge had a
single three-track span aligned with the two spans of the ECML bridge.
So the new bridge is as long as the bridge it replaced.

It's hard to believe that a bridge 50% longer than it needs to be would
have been cheaper than just filling the unused width with soil or even
concrete. So I'm wondering why did they build the long bridge? I'm also
wondering why the unused span was ever there.

It would be great if the answer was that they are planning a Goblin
station immediately west of the ECML and the span was left to allow
pedestrian access from Wightman Road, but I have heard nothing along
those lines. The current walk from Harringay to HGL is far enough and
lonely enough to deter anyone from using it as an interchange.
The answer is simple.

If the trackbed was blocked by the bridge and Network Rail subsequently
decided to add the third track then the highway authority would be
obliged to modify or rebuild the bridge to allow the additional track.