Stanford Viaduct is a railway viaduct in Leicestershire

Leicestershire

Leicestershire is a landlocked county in the English Midlands. It takes its name from the heavily populated City of Leicester, traditionally its administrative centre, although the City of Leicester unitary authority is today administered separately from the rest of Leicestershire...

 and Nottinghamshire

Nottinghamshire

Nottinghamshire is a county in the East Midlands of England, bordering South Yorkshire to the north-west, Lincolnshire to the east, Leicestershire to the south, and Derbyshire to the west...

. It is named after the nearby village of Stanford on Soar

Stanford on Soar

Stanford on Soar is a village and civil parish located on the River Soar, just within the Nottinghamshire side of the Nottinghamshire/Leicestershire boundary, in the Borough of Rushcliffe. It is around a mile north of Loughborough in Leicestershire. It is the southernmost place within the county of...

.

Built as part of the Great Central Railway

Great Central Railway

The Great Central Railway was a railway company in England which came into being when the Manchester, Sheffield and Lincolnshire Railway changed its name in 1897 in anticipation of the opening in 1899 of its London Extension . On 1 January 1923, it was grouped into the London and North Eastern...

's London Extension opened in 1899, it carried the Great Central Main Line

Great Central Main Line

The Great Central Main Line , also known as the London Extension of the Manchester, Sheffield and Lincolnshire Railway , is a former railway line which opened in 1899 linking Sheffield with Marylebone Station in London via Nottingham and Leicester.The GCML was the last main line railway built in...

 over the River Soar

River Soar

The River Soar is a tributary of the River Trent in the English East Midlands.-Description:It rises near Hinckley in Leicestershire and is joined by the River Sence near Enderby before flowing through Leicester , Barrow-on-Soar, beside Loughborough and Kegworth, before joining the Trent near...

 and a road (Meadow Lane). It was built by the contractor Henry Lovatt of Wolverhampton, out of blue brick. The three central arches are skewed

Skew arch

A skew arch is a method of construction that enables an arch bridge to span an obstacle at some angle other than a right angle. This results in the faces of the arch not being perpendicular to its abutments and its plan view being a parallelogram, rather than the rectangle that is the plan view of...

 to allow the Soar to pass underneath.

When the rest of the GCML was closed in the 1960s, the section from Loughborough South Junction was kept open as a branch of the Midland Main Line

Midland Main Line

The Midland Main Line is a major railway route in the United Kingdom, part of the British railway system.The present-day line links London St...

 to the British Gypsum

BPB plc

BPB plc is a British building materials business: it is the world's largest manufacturer of plasterboard. It once was a constituent of the FTSE 100 Index...

 works at East Leake

East Leake

East Leake is a large village and civil parish in the Rushcliffe district of Nottinghamshire, England, although its closest town and postal address is Loughborough across the border in Leicestershire. It has a population of around 7,000. The original village was located on the Sheepwash Brook. ...

.

Presently, the viaduct is in use for gypsum trains, and diesel or steam heritage trains from the Nottingham Heritage Centre run on certain Saturdays and Sundays, as well as other days. (see their timetable for more details). http://217.158.157.207/railways/GCRN/index.htm