Iron Over the West Okement
Meldon Viaduct carries the former London and South Western Railway line across the West Okement river gorge just west of Okehampton — a slender wrought iron lattice structure of remarkable elegance, completed in 1874 and now the most intact Victorian railway viaduct on Dartmoor. It stands approximately 150 feet above the river, carried on five wrought iron trestle piers, and spans 165 metres from abutment to abutment.
The viaduct was designed by William Jacomb, resident engineer for the LSWR extension to Lydford and Launceston. Construction used wrought iron throughout — this was 1874, the cusp of the transition to steel, and Meldon represents one of the later significant uses of wrought iron lattice construction in British railway engineering. A second parallel viaduct was added in 1879 to accommodate double-track working, and the two structures stood side by side until the second was demolished in 1990 when the line closed.
The surviving viaduct is now Grade II* listed and forms part of the Granite Way cycling and walking route across northern Dartmoor. The ironwork retains much of its original fabric, with the characteristic diamond-lattice bracing and the stiffening triangulations of the trestle piers clearly legible.
For Gaussian Splat reconstruction, Meldon is technically the most challenging scene in the archive. The viaduct spans a deep gorge, requiring capture from multiple elevations — below the deck, at deck level, and above — with the river and valley vegetation adding reflective and wind-disturbed surfaces. The payoff is a reconstruction that captures the full three-dimensional lattice structure in a way no photograph can match.