A SELF-employed worker badly affected by the closure of Moses Gate rail bridge decided to capture the true scale of the problem – and his drone footage has since been watched by thousands.

Shaun Welsby, 42, of Nandywell Road, Little Lever, runs Absolute Home Maintenance, but when a routine 30 minute call-out took four times longer than usual, he decided to take a closer look.

Mr Welsby said: ““There was a job I needed to do in Farnworth. I had to do a detour and it took two-and-a-half hours for what was really a half an hour job.

“To get around the works, you either need to go up the A666 or Bradford Road.

“I’ve been greatly affected by what’s going on and so have a lot of other people.

“The pictures that I had been seen of the work showed a very limited view of what’s going on, but from the drone footage you get a real perspective on what a massive project it is.”

Mr Welsby said the images had literally changed his perspective on the task facing Network Rail engineers.

The father-of-two filmed the footage last Wednesday, November 8 using his Mavic Pro drone, worth £1,350.

Captioned with a tongue-in-cheek title ‘The Farnworth Gap’, it gives an incredible bird’s eye view of the remediation work at Moses Gate and has been viewed more than 14,000 times.

The Moses Gate railway bridge, which carries the A6053 Bolton/Manchester Road was badly damaged on 17 August when a burst pipe caused a section of it to collapse onto the railway below, creating a hole in the road.

While the railway reopened on Wednesday, September 6, it’s estimated that the road above won’t be fully reopened until next year.