I visited Britain's most battered train bridge. No wonder the railways are in chaos

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For people living near Watling Street in Hinckley, it's not unusual to be woken in the night by a thunderous bang as another lorry comes to grief at the local railway bridge.

This small Leicestershire town is home to Britain's most battered bridge. Surrounded by depots of enormous vehicles, it was struck at least 22 times by lorries and buses throughout 2024 and 2025.

Across the country, a railway bridge is hit by a road vehicle every five hours, with about 1,700 strikes on bridges recorded by Network Rail between April 2024 and March 2025.

The result was 120 days of delays to train journeys last year and a £23m bill for taxpayers, with each strike costing about £13,000.

Some 43 per cent of lorry drivers admit to not measuring their vehicle before setting off and 52 per cent do not take low bridges into account.

Outside Hinckley on the A5, heavy goods vehicles of all types, from concrete mixers to delivery vans, push their luck at speed, zooming eye-wateringly close to the underbelly of the bridge that bears the scars of past collisions.

Each time one crunches underneath the steelwork, mayhem ensues, with long traffic jams, train delays and debris littering the road, according to residents.

"It's a nightmare," one neighbour says. "It's frightening, like a bang or an explosion. It happens all the time, at least once a week."

The bridge's luminous yellow-striped warning signs are visibly scarred by scrapes, while the supporting walls are missing large chunks of brick.

In the lay-by, splinters and vehicle parts lie scattered through the undergrowth and residents of a nearby caravan park report tables, chairs and even mattresses flying out of lorries.

A mother with two young daughters sighs as she recalls how the bangs shake the caravan almost weekly.

Chantelle Callton, 35, tells The Telegraph: "Oh my God, it shakes. It's like a bomb's gone off. Everybody speeds down here, so it's very dangerous."

The bridge is so notorious that she was warned about it more than six years ago before she moved there.

"If we go a week when it's not been hit, we'll say: 'We're due one soon,'" she adds.

Dianna Smith, 60, who runs the caravan site with her husband, says her son and his friend had to help a trapped driver out of a lorry in the night. "It's a ticking time-bomb until something bad happens," she adds.

"They get that much speed up and don't realise they're too high. One lorry's top was pulled back like a tin opener. They have to stop the trains and it messes everything up."

Betty Watton, 44, sitting outside with her two chihuahuas, lives closest to the bridge and says drivers often flee the scene.

She says: "One lorry tore the whole top off and just left it in the road, rolled up like a big piece of scrap. One time paint tins spilt and paint went everywhere, but it's mainly parcels."

At a nearby depot filled with HGVs and lorries, workers clad in orange hi-vis laugh knowingly at the mention of the bridge.

They refuse to speak, but one jokes to another: "How many times have you hit it?"

Vehicles over a certain height at the Greenway Environmental depot have to take lengthy detours to avoid the bridge, including driving on to the motorway, the assistant manager says.

Another worker suggests it might not be the most strategic location for a lorry depot.

"Earlier this year, one was full of papers, cardboard and packaging. When that got ripped apart, it peeled the lid back and paper and card flew everywhere, blocking the street off for quite a while," he says.

"There are a lot of industrial sites and major warehouses here. The kind of places that have drivers that are coming here for the very first time. They follow their sat nav, but still...

"There are a lot of light-up signs the whole way saying: 'High vehicle. Turn back.' But it's become quite an issue that lorry drivers use their phones while driving."

National Highways has planned to lower the road under the bridge since 2023, but critics of the scheme fear it would be complex and lead to flooding.

Karen, the landlady of a nearby pub, says road works will only add to the traffic jams blighting her business.

With the construction of a new supermarket depot around the bridge, she fears that the problem will not be going away anytime soon.