Lorry caught under bridge (From This Is Wiltshire)

Lorry caught under bridge

8:10am Saturday 10th December 2011 in Latest News

A LORRY driver who underestimated the height of his vehicle caused traffic mayhem when it became wedged under a railway bridge in Wootton Bassett Road.

Queues of traffic built up after the incident at 10am yesterday as the road was reduced to a single lane.

It was later completely closed while emergency services worked to remove the lorry, which was travelling from the Kingshill direction.

The vehicle had become wedged under the 14ft 9in bridge’s structural support.Trains had to drive slowly as a precaution as they passed overhead.

John Griffiths, who had driven the lorry from Cambridge said: “I was going just into Iceland around that corner and I thought I would get underneath the bridge and obviously I didn’t.

“I was driving straight through and it jittered and it resulted in that.

“It’s a 15ft 3in lorry, it must be. I thought it was about 14ft 6in. I am really shaken up.

“I have been driving for 20-odd years and I have never had anything like that happen to me before. I’m not injured, just shaken.”

Police were called to the scene at 9.55am and directed traffic past the lorry.

A Network Rail worker was also at the scene to assess any damage to the bridge.

Wiltshire Police traffic sergeant Steve Love said: “The vehicle was coming from Kingshill and it got stuck under the bridge.

“Trains were on caution – they were still using the bridge but they were using it very slowly.

“Getting the lorry out was a difficult one.

“It was wedged in on the corner of the support and all the weight is on the trailer.

“It needed specialist recovery. We had to close the whole road to enable us to recover it.”

The road was completely closed at about noon while Greenmeadow Recovery removed the lorry.

The workers had to stop what they were doing every 15 minutes to let trains past.

A spokeswoman for Network Rail said the incident had caused 35 minutes of delays until 11.10am when an engineer confirmed the damage was minor. Trains were then able to return to line speed. Traffic returned to normal at about 2pm.