Yet the railway bridge at Carrigpark in County Cork has spent more than half a century doing precisely that, carrying nothing but air since the line it served was closed and lifted in 1967. The Carrig River runs below, and the trees of the ravine have long since grown up around the piers, giving the whole structure an air of something reclaimed rather than abandoned.

The bridge was built as part of the Mallow to Fermoy railway line, which opened in 1860. Six semicircular arches carry the deck across five piers of ashlar limestone, that is, stone cut and laid in precise, dressed blocks, finished here with a rock-faced texture that gives the surface a rougher, more natural appearance than the tight joints underneath would suggest. The piers taper gently as they rise, measuring around 5.3 metres by 2.54 metres at their base and spaced approximately 13.6 metres apart. A small but telling detail survives near the tops of the arches: corbels, short stone projections built into the masonry to support the temporary wooden centring used to form each arch during construction. Once the arch was complete and the keystones set, the centring was removed, but the corbels remained, a record of the building process embedded in the finished work. A low parapet wall of ashlar construction runs along the top, with a string course marking its base on the outer face. The line served North Cork for over a century before closing in 1967, after which the track was removed, leaving the viaduct as the most substantial evidence that the railway ever passed this way.