At Blackfriars there are two bridges over the river - one for the railway and one for the road. On this occassion I'll treat these as two separate bridge as, unlike the Hungerford Bridge, the bridges do stand apart from one another. The original Blackfriars Railway Bridge was opened in 1864 and was designed by Joseph Cubitt for the London, Chatham and Dover Railway. Cubitt was already working on a rebuild of the adjacent road bridge and he became the obvious choice of designer. Twenty years later mor tracks were needed and a second bridge built to match the spans of Cubitt's bridge. The second, and present day, bridge was built immediately downstream of the first bridge. It was designed by John Wolfe-Barry and Henri Marc Brunel, built by W. Mills and opened in 1886. In 1923 following a reorganisation of the railways, Southern Railway decided to use Waterloo and Victoria for most of their long-distance services. Consquently the importance of St Paul's Station (as Blackfriars was originally known as) dwindled. By the 1960s the original bridge was considered too weak for modern day trains and by 1984 had been fully dismantled. Only the red columns and piers remain, as well as one of the cast iron LCDR badges on display along the Thames Path.
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