WORK is needed on road-over-rail bridges throughout the region - despite recently completed safety upgrades.

Highways chiefs have ordered fresh checks on scores of bridges amid fears that some may not be strong enough to accommodate a new class of 40-tonne lorries.

Some have already been upgraded.

A £10,000 bridge barrier was recently installed on a bridge near Durham City.

Durham County Council constructed the barrier on the A177 where it crosses the mothballed Leamside railway line between Shincliffe Village and the A1 motorway.

The authority is carrying out a county-wide programme of assessing and strengthening bridges.

The bridge already had adequate barriers, but environment director Chris Tunstall said: "We erected the extra barrier to prevent heavy lorries from straying on to the eastern edge of the bridge, which, because it was constructed to accommodate a service bay carrying pipes and cables across the railway line, is weaker than the opposite edge."

Many bridges have already been upgraded after the Selby rail tragedy prompted a review of safety.

Durham was the first highway authority in the country to initiate a programme of safety improvements following the tragedy. It inspected 41 bridges, including the Shincliffe structure.

Improvements have already been made to four bridges, at Plawsworth, Littleburn, Browney Lane and Sedgefield Station.

Work on the other three requiring attention - at Hett, Ricknall Lane and Bradbury - will be undertaken this financial year and next.

The potential for heavy lorries to wreak havoc was highlighted in August last year in Howden, East Yorkshire, when an articulated lorry carrying a crane smashed through a bridge barrier.

It was left hanging precariously over the Hull to Selby line for more than a day before being removed.

* Five historic bridges in Teesdale are being refurbished in a £300,000 scheme by Durham County Council.

Whorlton Bridge, the Grove Bridge in Hamsterley Forest, the Nabb packhorse bridge near Bowes, Deepdale bridge near Startforth, and Egglestone Abbey packhorse bridge, are all the subject of repair work.

Read more about the Railway Bridsges scandal here.