Forth Bridge
Encyclopedia
The Forth Bridge is a cantilever
railway bridge
over the Firth of Forth
in the east of Scotland
, to the east of the Forth Road Bridge
, and 14 kilometres (9 mi) west of central Edinburgh
. It was opened on 4 March 1890, and spans a total length of 2528.7 metres (8,296.3 ft). It is often called the Forth Rail Bridge or Forth Railway Bridge to distinguish it from the Forth Road Bridge
, although it has been called the "Forth Bridge" since its construction, and was for over seventy years the sole claimant to this name.
The bridge connects Scotland's capital city, Edinburgh
, with Fife
, leaving the Lothians at Dalmeny
and arriving in Fife
at North Queensferry
; it acts as a major artery connecting the north-east and south-east of the country. Described in the Collins Encyclopaedia of Scotland as "the one immediately and internationally recognised Scottish landmark", it may be nominated by the British government to be added to the UNESCO
World Heritage Sites in Scotland
. The bridge and its associated railway infrastructure is owned by Network Rail
Infrastructure Limited.
Until 1917, when the Quebec Bridge
was completed, the Forth Bridge had the longest single cantilever bridge span in the world. It still has the world's second-longest single span.
Construction of an earlier bridge, designed by Sir Thomas Bouch
, got as far as the laying of the foundation stone, but was stopped after the failure of another of his works, the Tay Bridge
. Bouch had proposed a suspension bridge
but the public inquiry into the Tay bridge disaster showed that he had under-designed the structure and mistakenly used cast iron
, which weakened the entire structure. The project was handed over to two other Englishmen, Sir John Fowler
and Sir Benjamin Baker, who designed a structure that was built by Glasgow based company Sir William Arrol & Co.
between 1883 and 1890. Baker and his colleague Allan Stewart received the major credit for design and overseeing building work. During its construction, over 450 workers were injured and 98 lost their lives.
alone, the first bridge in Britain to use that material. It was the first major structure in Britain to be constructed of steel; its contemporary, the Eiffel Tower
was built of wrought iron
.
Large amounts of steel had become available only after the invention of the Bessemer process
in 1855. Until 1877 the British Board of Trade
had limited the use of steel in structural engineering
because the process produced steel of unpredictable strength. Only the Siemens-Martin open-hearth process developed by 1875 yielded steel of consistent quality. The 64,800 tons of steel needed for the bridge was provided by two steel works in Scotland and one in Wales
.
returning British sailors would time their departures or returns to the base at Rosyth
by asking when they would pass under the bridge. This practice continued at least up to the 1990s.
The first German air attack on Britain of the Second World War took place over the Forth Bridge. Six weeks into the war, on 16 October 1939, German bombers launched an attack on Rosyth naval base
. RAF 603 "City of Edinburgh" Spitfire squadron shot down the first German planes over Britain during the attack.
arms supporting a central 106.7 metres (350.1 ft) span truss. The three great four-tower cantilever structures are 100.6 metres (330.1 ft) tall, each 70 feet (21.3 m) diameter foot resting on a separate foundation. The southern group of foundations had to be constructed as caissons
under compressed air, to a depth of 90 feet (27.4 m). At its peak, approximately 4,600 workers were employed in its construction. Initially, it was recorded that 57 lives were lost; however, after extensive research by local historians, the figure was increased to 98. Eight men were saved by boats positioned in the river under the working areas.
Hundreds of workers were left crippled by serious accidents, and one log book of accidents and sickness had 26,000 entries. In 2005, a project was set up by the Queensferry History Group to establish a memorial to those workers who died during the bridge's construction. In North Queensferry, a decision was also made to set up memorial benches to commemorate those who died during the construction of both the rail and the road bridges, and to seek support for this project from Fife Council.
According to the Forth Bridges Visitors Centre Trust, on 1 January 1890 the riveted weight of the bridge superstructure was 50513 LT. As well as the steel used, the bridge construction required 18122 cubic metres (639,972.4 cu ft) of granite
and 6.5 million rivet
s. The bridge was opened on 4 March 1890 by the Prince of Wales, later King Edward VII
, who drove home the last rivet, which was gold plated and suitably inscribed..The key for the official opening was made by Edinburgh Silversmith John Finlayson Bain. There is a plaque on the bridge commerating this. The Edinburgh Incorporation of Goldsmiths list a JB mark for John Finlayson Bain.
The use of a cantilever in bridge design was not a new idea, but the scale of Baker's undertaking was a pioneering effort, later followed in different parts of the world. Much of the work done was without precedent, including calculations for incidence of erection stresses, provisions made for reducing future maintenance costs, calculations for wind pressures made evident by the Tay Bridge disaster
, the effect of temperature stresses on the structure, and so on.
Where possible, the bridge used natural features such as Inchgarvie
, an island, the promontories on either side of the firth
at this point, and also the high banks on either side.
The bridge has a speed limit of 50 miles per hour (22.4 m/s) for passenger trains and 20 miles per hour (8.9 m/s) for freight trains. The weight limit for any train on the bridge is 1422 tonnes (1,399.5 LT) although this was waived for the frequent coal trains which used the bridge prior to the reopening of the Stirling-Alloa-Kincardine railway, provided two such trains did not simultaneously occupy the bridge. The route availability
code is RA8, meaning any current UK locomotive can use the bridge, which was designed to accommodate heavier steam locomotive
s.
Up to 190–200 trains per day crossed the bridge in 2006.
(NBR) had lines on both sides of the Firth of Forth between which trains could not pass except by running at least as far west as and using the lines of a rival company. The only alternative route between Edinburgh and Fife involved the ferry at Queensferry, which was purchased by the NBR in 1867. Accordingly, the NBR sponsored the Forth Bridge project which would give them a direct link independent of the Caledonian Railway
; a conference at York in 1881 set up the Forth Bridge Railway Committee, to which the NBR contributed 35% of the cost. The remaining money came from three English railways, over whose routes the NBR ran trains to London: the Midland Railway
, to which the NBR connected at and which owned the route to London (St Pancras)
, contributed 30%, whilst the remainder came equally from the North Eastern Railway
and the Great Northern Railway
, who between them owned the route between and London (King's Cross), via . This body undertook to construct and maintain the bridge. In 1882 the NBR were given powers to purchase the bridge, which it never exercised. At the time of the 1923 Grouping, the bridge was still jointly owned by the same four railways, and so it became jointly owned by these companies' successors, the London Midland and Scottish Railway (30%) and the London and North Eastern Railway
(70%). The Forth Bridge Railway Company was named in the Transport Act 1947
as one of the bodies to be nationalised and so became part of British Railways on 1 January 1948. Under the Act, Forth Bridge shareholders would receive £109 of British Transport stock for each £100 of Forth Bridge Debenture stock; and £104-17-6d (£104.87½) of British Transport stock for each £100 of Forth Bridge Ordinary stock.
Although modern trains put fewer stresses on the bridge than the earlier steam trains, the bridge needs constant maintenance, and this is currently undertaken by Balfour Beatty
under contract to Network Rail
.
"Painting the Forth Bridge" is a colloquial expression for a never-ending task, coined on the erroneous belief that at one time in the history of the bridge repainting was required and commenced immediately upon completion of the previous repaint. According to a 2004 New Civil Engineer
report on modern maintenance, such a practice never existed, although under British Rail
management, and before, the bridge had a permanent maintenance crew.
A recent repainting of the bridge commenced with a contract award in 2002, for a schedule of work which was expected to continue until March 2009; this work is now due to be completed on 9th December 2011 . This involves the application of 20,000 m2 of paint at a total cost in excess of £130M. This new coat of paint is expected to have a life of at least 25 years, and perhaps as long as 40, thus removing the need for constant repainting. This has been designed and researched by Malcolm Astle and his Coatings Team in Derby. The work involves blasting all previous layers of paint off the bridge for the first time in its history, allowing for repairs to be made to the steel.
In a report produced by JE Jacobs, Grant Thornton and Faber Maunsell in 2007 which reviewed the alternative options for a second road crossing, it was stated that "Network Rail has estimated the life of the bridge to be in excess of 100 years. However, this is dependant upon NR’s inspection and refurbishment works programme for the bridge being carried out year on year".
ran between Kirkcaldy and Edinburgh, but Stagecoach have indicated that they are not interested in developing this into a service.
The new Stirling-Alloa-Kincardine rail link
will divert coal trains away from the bridge. Instead they will travel via Stirling to Longannet Power Station
. Freight restrictions may then be lifted, with the potential of increasing the number of trains from 10 tph (trains per hour) to 12.
The 2007 series of banknotes issued by the Bank of Scotland
depicts different bridges in Scotland as examples of Scottish engineering, and the £20 note features the Forth Bridge.
Cantilever bridge
A cantilever bridge is a bridge built using cantilevers, structures that project horizontally into space, supported on only one end. For small footbridges, the cantilevers may be simple beams; however, large cantilever bridges designed to handle road or rail traffic use trusses built from...
railway bridge
Bridge
A bridge is a structure built to span physical obstacles such as a body of water, valley, or road, for the purpose of providing passage over the obstacle...
over the Firth of Forth
Firth of Forth
The Firth of Forth is the estuary or firth of Scotland's River Forth, where it flows into the North Sea, between Fife to the north, and West Lothian, the City of Edinburgh and East Lothian to the south...
in the east of Scotland
Scotland
Scotland is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. Occupying the northern third of the island of Great Britain, it shares a border with England to the south and is bounded by the North Sea to the east, the Atlantic Ocean to the north and west, and the North Channel and Irish Sea to the...
, to the east of the Forth Road Bridge
Forth Road Bridge
The Forth Road Bridge is a suspension bridge in east central Scotland. The bridge, opened in 1964, spans the Firth of Forth, connecting the capital city Edinburgh, at South Queensferry, to Fife, at North Queensferry...
, and 14 kilometres (9 mi) west of central Edinburgh
Edinburgh
Edinburgh is the capital city of Scotland, the second largest city in Scotland, and the eighth most populous in the United Kingdom. The City of Edinburgh Council governs one of Scotland's 32 local government council areas. The council area includes urban Edinburgh and a rural area...
. It was opened on 4 March 1890, and spans a total length of 2528.7 metres (8,296.3 ft). It is often called the Forth Rail Bridge or Forth Railway Bridge to distinguish it from the Forth Road Bridge
Forth Road Bridge
The Forth Road Bridge is a suspension bridge in east central Scotland. The bridge, opened in 1964, spans the Firth of Forth, connecting the capital city Edinburgh, at South Queensferry, to Fife, at North Queensferry...
, although it has been called the "Forth Bridge" since its construction, and was for over seventy years the sole claimant to this name.
The bridge connects Scotland's capital city, Edinburgh
Edinburgh
Edinburgh is the capital city of Scotland, the second largest city in Scotland, and the eighth most populous in the United Kingdom. The City of Edinburgh Council governs one of Scotland's 32 local government council areas. The council area includes urban Edinburgh and a rural area...
, with Fife
Fife
Fife is a council area and former county of Scotland. It is situated between the Firth of Tay and the Firth of Forth, with inland boundaries to Perth and Kinross and Clackmannanshire...
, leaving the Lothians at Dalmeny
Dalmeny
Dalmeny is a suburban village and civil parish in Edinburgh, Scotland. It is located on the south side of the Firth of Forth, east-southeast of South Queensferry and west-northwest of central Edinburgh; it falls under the local governance of the City of Edinburgh Council.The name Dalmeny is...
and arriving in Fife
Fife
Fife is a council area and former county of Scotland. It is situated between the Firth of Tay and the Firth of Forth, with inland boundaries to Perth and Kinross and Clackmannanshire...
at North Queensferry
North Queensferry
North Queensferry is a village in Fife, Scotland, on the Firth of Forth, between the Forth Bridge and the Forth Road Bridge, and from Edinburgh. According to the 2008 population estimate, the village has a population of 1,150. It is the southernmost settlement in Fife.The Scottish Gaelic name...
; it acts as a major artery connecting the north-east and south-east of the country. Described in the Collins Encyclopaedia of Scotland as "the one immediately and internationally recognised Scottish landmark", it may be nominated by the British government to be added to the UNESCO
UNESCO
The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization is a specialized agency of the United Nations...
World Heritage Sites in Scotland
World Heritage Sites in Scotland
World Heritage Sites in Scotland are specific locations that have been included in the UNESCO World Heritage Programme list of sites of outstanding cultural or natural importance to the common heritage of humankind. Historic Scotland is responsible for 'cultural' sites as part of their wider...
. The bridge and its associated railway infrastructure is owned by Network Rail
Network Rail
Network Rail is the government-created owner and operator of most of the rail infrastructure in Great Britain .; it is not responsible for railway infrastructure in Northern Ireland...
Infrastructure Limited.
Until 1917, when the Quebec Bridge
Quebec Bridge
right|thumb|Lifting the centre span in place was considered to be a major engineering achievement. Photo caption from [[Popular Mechanics]] Magazine, December 1917...
was completed, the Forth Bridge had the longest single cantilever bridge span in the world. It still has the world's second-longest single span.
History
Thomas Bouch
Sir Thomas Bouch was a British railway engineer in Victorian Britain.He was born in Thursby, near Carlisle, Cumberland, England and lived in Edinburgh. He helped develop the caisson and the roll-on/roll-off train ferry. He worked initially for the North British Railway and helped design parts of...
, got as far as the laying of the foundation stone, but was stopped after the failure of another of his works, the Tay Bridge
Tay Rail Bridge
The Tay Bridge is a railway bridge approximately two and a quarter miles long that spans the Firth of Tay in Scotland, between the city of Dundee and the suburb of Wormit in Fife ....
. Bouch had proposed a suspension bridge
Suspension bridge
A suspension bridge is a type of bridge in which the deck is hung below suspension cables on vertical suspenders. Outside Tibet and Bhutan, where the first examples of this type of bridge were built in the 15th century, this type of bridge dates from the early 19th century...
but the public inquiry into the Tay bridge disaster showed that he had under-designed the structure and mistakenly used cast iron
Cast iron
Cast iron is derived from pig iron, and while it usually refers to gray iron, it also identifies a large group of ferrous alloys which solidify with a eutectic. The color of a fractured surface can be used to identify an alloy. White cast iron is named after its white surface when fractured, due...
, which weakened the entire structure. The project was handed over to two other Englishmen, Sir John Fowler
John Fowler (engineer)
Sir John Fowler, 1st Baronet KCMG LLD was an English civil engineer specialising in the construction of railways and railway infrastructure. In the 1850s and 1860s, he was engineer for the world's first underground railway, London's Metropolitan Railway, built by the "cut-and-cover" method under...
and Sir Benjamin Baker, who designed a structure that was built by Glasgow based company Sir William Arrol & Co.
Sir William Arrol & Co.
Sir William Arrol & Co. was a leading Scottish civil engineering business founded by William Arrol and based in Glasgow. It built some of the most famous bridges in the United Kingdom including the Forth Bridge and Tower Bridge in London.-Early history:...
between 1883 and 1890. Baker and his colleague Allan Stewart received the major credit for design and overseeing building work. During its construction, over 450 workers were injured and 98 lost their lives.
First steel structure
The bridge was built in steelSteel
Steel is an alloy that consists mostly of iron and has a carbon content between 0.2% and 2.1% by weight, depending on the grade. Carbon is the most common alloying material for iron, but various other alloying elements are used, such as manganese, chromium, vanadium, and tungsten...
alone, the first bridge in Britain to use that material. It was the first major structure in Britain to be constructed of steel; its contemporary, the Eiffel Tower
Eiffel Tower
The Eiffel Tower is a puddle iron lattice tower located on the Champ de Mars in Paris. Built in 1889, it has become both a global icon of France and one of the most recognizable structures in the world...
was built of wrought iron
Wrought iron
thumb|The [[Eiffel tower]] is constructed from [[puddle iron]], a form of wrought ironWrought iron is an iron alloy with a very low carbon...
.
Large amounts of steel had become available only after the invention of the Bessemer process
Bessemer process
The Bessemer process was the first inexpensive industrial process for the mass-production of steel from molten pig iron. The process is named after its inventor, Henry Bessemer, who took out a patent on the process in 1855. The process was independently discovered in 1851 by William Kelly...
in 1855. Until 1877 the British Board of Trade
Board of Trade
The Board of Trade is a committee of the Privy Council of the United Kingdom, originating as a committee of inquiry in the 17th century and evolving gradually into a government department with a diverse range of functions...
had limited the use of steel in structural engineering
Structural engineering
Structural engineering is a field of engineering dealing with the analysis and design of structures that support or resist loads. Structural engineering is usually considered a specialty within civil engineering, but it can also be studied in its own right....
because the process produced steel of unpredictable strength. Only the Siemens-Martin open-hearth process developed by 1875 yielded steel of consistent quality. The 64,800 tons of steel needed for the bridge was provided by two steel works in Scotland and one in Wales
Wales
Wales is a country that is part of the United Kingdom and the island of Great Britain, bordered by England to its east and the Atlantic Ocean and Irish Sea to its west. It has a population of three million, and a total area of 20,779 km²...
.
World Wars
In World War IWorld War I
World War I , which was predominantly called the World War or the Great War from its occurrence until 1939, and the First World War or World War I thereafter, was a major war centred in Europe that began on 28 July 1914 and lasted until 11 November 1918...
returning British sailors would time their departures or returns to the base at Rosyth
Rosyth
Rosyth is a town located on the Firth of Forth, three miles south of the centre of Dunfermline. According to an estimate taken in 2008, the town has a population of 12,790....
by asking when they would pass under the bridge. This practice continued at least up to the 1990s.
The first German air attack on Britain of the Second World War took place over the Forth Bridge. Six weeks into the war, on 16 October 1939, German bombers launched an attack on Rosyth naval base
Rosyth Dockyard
Rosyth Dockyard is a large naval dockyard on the Firth of Forth at Rosyth, Fife, Scotland, owned by Babcock Marine, which primarily undertakes refitting of Royal Navy surface vessels.-History:...
. RAF 603 "City of Edinburgh" Spitfire squadron shot down the first German planes over Britain during the attack.
Construction
The bridge is, even today, regarded as an engineering marvel. It is 2.5 kilometres (1.6 mi) in length, and the double track is elevated 46 metres (150.9 ft) above high tide. It consists of two main spans of 521.3 metres (1,710.3 ft), two side spans of 207.3 metres (680.1 ft), and 15 approach spans of 51.2 metres (168 ft). Each main span comprises two 207.3 metres (680.1 ft) cantileverCantilever
A cantilever is a beam anchored at only one end. The beam carries the load to the support where it is resisted by moment and shear stress. Cantilever construction allows for overhanging structures without external bracing. Cantilevers can also be constructed with trusses or slabs.This is in...
arms supporting a central 106.7 metres (350.1 ft) span truss. The three great four-tower cantilever structures are 100.6 metres (330.1 ft) tall, each 70 feet (21.3 m) diameter foot resting on a separate foundation. The southern group of foundations had to be constructed as caissons
Caisson (engineering)
In geotechnical engineering, a caisson is a retaining, watertight structure used, for example, to work on the foundations of a bridge pier, for the construction of a concrete dam, or for the repair of ships. These are constructed such that the water can be pumped out, keeping the working...
under compressed air, to a depth of 90 feet (27.4 m). At its peak, approximately 4,600 workers were employed in its construction. Initially, it was recorded that 57 lives were lost; however, after extensive research by local historians, the figure was increased to 98. Eight men were saved by boats positioned in the river under the working areas.
Granite
Granite is a common and widely occurring type of intrusive, felsic, igneous rock. Granite usually has a medium- to coarse-grained texture. Occasionally some individual crystals are larger than the groundmass, in which case the texture is known as porphyritic. A granitic rock with a porphyritic...
and 6.5 million rivet
Rivet
A rivet is a permanent mechanical fastener. Before being installed a rivet consists of a smooth cylindrical shaft with a head on one end. The end opposite the head is called the buck-tail. On installation the rivet is placed in a punched or pre-drilled hole, and the tail is upset, or bucked A rivet...
s. The bridge was opened on 4 March 1890 by the Prince of Wales, later King Edward VII
Edward VII of the United Kingdom
Edward VII was King of the United Kingdom and the British Dominions and Emperor of India from 22 January 1901 until his death in 1910...
, who drove home the last rivet, which was gold plated and suitably inscribed..The key for the official opening was made by Edinburgh Silversmith John Finlayson Bain. There is a plaque on the bridge commerating this. The Edinburgh Incorporation of Goldsmiths list a JB mark for John Finlayson Bain.
The use of a cantilever in bridge design was not a new idea, but the scale of Baker's undertaking was a pioneering effort, later followed in different parts of the world. Much of the work done was without precedent, including calculations for incidence of erection stresses, provisions made for reducing future maintenance costs, calculations for wind pressures made evident by the Tay Bridge disaster
Tay Bridge disaster
The Tay Bridge disaster occurred on 28 December 1879, when the first Tay Rail Bridge, which crossed the Firth of Tay between Dundee and Wormit in Scotland, collapsed during a violent storm while a train was passing over it. The bridge was designed by the noted railway engineer Sir Thomas Bouch,...
, the effect of temperature stresses on the structure, and so on.
Where possible, the bridge used natural features such as Inchgarvie
Inchgarvie
Inchgarvie is a small, uninhabited island in the Firth of Forth. Its name comes from Innis Garbhach which is Scottish Gaelic for "rough island"...
, an island, the promontories on either side of the firth
Firth
Firth is the word in the Lowland Scots language and in English used to denote various coastal waters in Scotland and England. In mainland Scotland it is used to describe a large sea bay, or even a strait. In the Northern Isles it more usually refers to a smaller inlet...
at this point, and also the high banks on either side.
The bridge has a speed limit of 50 miles per hour (22.4 m/s) for passenger trains and 20 miles per hour (8.9 m/s) for freight trains. The weight limit for any train on the bridge is 1422 tonnes (1,399.5 LT) although this was waived for the frequent coal trains which used the bridge prior to the reopening of the Stirling-Alloa-Kincardine railway, provided two such trains did not simultaneously occupy the bridge. The route availability
Route availability
Route Availability is the system by which the permanent way and supporting works of the National Rail network of Great Britain are graded. All routes are allocated an RA number between 1 and 10....
code is RA8, meaning any current UK locomotive can use the bridge, which was designed to accommodate heavier steam locomotive
Steam locomotive
A steam locomotive is a railway locomotive that produces its power through a steam engine. These locomotives are fueled by burning some combustible material, usually coal, wood or oil, to produce steam in a boiler, which drives the steam engine...
s.
Up to 190–200 trains per day crossed the bridge in 2006.
Ownership
Prior to the opening of the bridge, the North British RailwayNorth British Railway
The North British Railway was a Scottish railway company that was absorbed into the London and North Eastern Railway at the Grouping in 1923.-History:...
(NBR) had lines on both sides of the Firth of Forth between which trains could not pass except by running at least as far west as and using the lines of a rival company. The only alternative route between Edinburgh and Fife involved the ferry at Queensferry, which was purchased by the NBR in 1867. Accordingly, the NBR sponsored the Forth Bridge project which would give them a direct link independent of the Caledonian Railway
Caledonian Railway
The Caledonian Railway was a major Scottish railway company. It was formed in the early 19th century and it was absorbed almost a century later into the London, Midland and Scottish Railway, in the 1923 railway grouping, by means of the Railways Act 1921...
; a conference at York in 1881 set up the Forth Bridge Railway Committee, to which the NBR contributed 35% of the cost. The remaining money came from three English railways, over whose routes the NBR ran trains to London: the Midland Railway
Midland Railway
The Midland Railway was a railway company in the United Kingdom from 1844 to 1922, when it became part of the London, Midland and Scottish Railway....
, to which the NBR connected at and which owned the route to London (St Pancras)
St Pancras railway station
St Pancras railway station, also known as London St Pancras and since 2007 as St Pancras International, is a central London railway terminus celebrated for its Victorian architecture. The Grade I listed building stands on Euston Road in St Pancras, London Borough of Camden, between the...
, contributed 30%, whilst the remainder came equally from the North Eastern Railway
North Eastern Railway (UK)
The North Eastern Railway , was an English railway company. It was incorporated in 1854, when four existing companies were combined, and was absorbed into the London and North Eastern Railway at the Grouping in 1923...
and the Great Northern Railway
Great Northern Railway (Great Britain)
The Great Northern Railway was a British railway company established by the Great Northern Railway Act of 1846. On 1 January 1923 the company lost its identity as a constituent of the newly formed London and North Eastern Railway....
, who between them owned the route between and London (King's Cross), via . This body undertook to construct and maintain the bridge. In 1882 the NBR were given powers to purchase the bridge, which it never exercised. At the time of the 1923 Grouping, the bridge was still jointly owned by the same four railways, and so it became jointly owned by these companies' successors, the London Midland and Scottish Railway (30%) and the London and North Eastern Railway
London and North Eastern Railway
The London and North Eastern Railway was the second-largest of the "Big Four" railway companies created by the Railways Act 1921 in Britain...
(70%). The Forth Bridge Railway Company was named in the Transport Act 1947
Transport Act 1947
The Transport Act 1947 is an Act of the Parliament of the United Kingdom. Under it the railways, long-distance road haulage and various other types of transport were acquired by the state and handed over to a new British Transport Commission for operation...
as one of the bodies to be nationalised and so became part of British Railways on 1 January 1948. Under the Act, Forth Bridge shareholders would receive £109 of British Transport stock for each £100 of Forth Bridge Debenture stock; and £104-17-6d (£104.87½) of British Transport stock for each £100 of Forth Bridge Ordinary stock.
Maintenance
A structure like the Forth Bridge needs constant maintenance and the ancillary works for the bridge included not only a maintenance workshop and yard but a railway "colony" of some fifty houses at Dalmeny Station. The track on the bridge is of "waybeam" construction: 12 inch square baulks of timber 6 metres long are bolted into steel troughs in the bridge deck and the rails are fixed on top of these sleepers. In 1992 the bridge was re-railed with standard BS113A rail (54 kg/m). Prior to 1992 the rails on the bridge were of a unique "Forth Bridge" section.Although modern trains put fewer stresses on the bridge than the earlier steam trains, the bridge needs constant maintenance, and this is currently undertaken by Balfour Beatty
Balfour Beatty
Balfour Beatty plc is a British construction, engineering, military housing, rail and investment services company. It is one of the largest construction companies in the UK, and the 15th largest in the world...
under contract to Network Rail
Network Rail
Network Rail is the government-created owner and operator of most of the rail infrastructure in Great Britain .; it is not responsible for railway infrastructure in Northern Ireland...
.
"Painting the Forth Bridge" is a colloquial expression for a never-ending task, coined on the erroneous belief that at one time in the history of the bridge repainting was required and commenced immediately upon completion of the previous repaint. According to a 2004 New Civil Engineer
New Civil Engineer
New Civil Engineer is the weekly magazine of the Institution of Civil Engineers, the UK chartered body that oversees the practice of civil engineering in the UK. It is published by EMAP who acquired the title and editorial control from the ICE in 1995...
report on modern maintenance, such a practice never existed, although under British Rail
British Rail
British Railways , which from 1965 traded as British Rail, was the operator of most of the rail transport in Great Britain between 1948 and 1997. It was formed from the nationalisation of the "Big Four" British railway companies and lasted until the gradual privatisation of British Rail, in stages...
management, and before, the bridge had a permanent maintenance crew.
A recent repainting of the bridge commenced with a contract award in 2002, for a schedule of work which was expected to continue until March 2009; this work is now due to be completed on 9th December 2011 . This involves the application of 20,000 m2 of paint at a total cost in excess of £130M. This new coat of paint is expected to have a life of at least 25 years, and perhaps as long as 40, thus removing the need for constant repainting. This has been designed and researched by Malcolm Astle and his Coatings Team in Derby. The work involves blasting all previous layers of paint off the bridge for the first time in its history, allowing for repairs to be made to the steel.
In a report produced by JE Jacobs, Grant Thornton and Faber Maunsell in 2007 which reviewed the alternative options for a second road crossing, it was stated that "Network Rail has estimated the life of the bridge to be in excess of 100 years. However, this is dependant upon NR’s inspection and refurbishment works programme for the bridge being carried out year on year".
Competition
In 2007, in a two week trial jointly funded by SEStran and StageCoach, a passenger hovercraftHovercraft
A hovercraft is a craft capable of traveling over surfaces while supported by a cushion of slow moving, high-pressure air which is ejected against the surface below and contained within a "skirt." Although supported by air, a hovercraft is not considered an aircraft.Hovercraft are used throughout...
ran between Kirkcaldy and Edinburgh, but Stagecoach have indicated that they are not interested in developing this into a service.
The new Stirling-Alloa-Kincardine rail link
Stirling-Alloa-Kincardine rail link
The Stirling-Alloa-Kincardine rail link was a project to re-open of railway line between the towns of Stirling, Alloa and Kincardine in Scotland, United Kingdom. The route opened to rail traffic in March 2008.- Background :...
will divert coal trains away from the bridge. Instead they will travel via Stirling to Longannet Power Station
Longannet power station
Longannet power station is a large coal-fired power station in Fife capable of co-firing biomass, natural gas and sludge. The station is situated on the north bank of the Firth of Forth, near Kincardine on Forth. Its generating capacity of 2,400 megawatts is the highest of any power station in...
. Freight restrictions may then be lifted, with the potential of increasing the number of trains from 10 tph (trains per hour) to 12.
Banknotes, coins
A representation of the Forth Bridge appears on the 2004 Issue one pound coin.The 2007 series of banknotes issued by the Bank of Scotland
Bank of Scotland
The Bank of Scotland plc is a commercial and clearing bank based in Edinburgh, Scotland. With a history dating to the 17th century, it is the second oldest surviving bank in what is now the United Kingdom, and is the only commercial institution created by the Parliament of Scotland to...
depicts different bridges in Scotland as examples of Scottish engineering, and the £20 note features the Forth Bridge.
Popular culture
- There is a scene on the bridge in Alfred HitchcockAlfred HitchcockSir Alfred Joseph Hitchcock, KBE was a British film director and producer. He pioneered many techniques in the suspense and psychological thriller genres. After a successful career in British cinema in both silent films and early talkies, Hitchcock moved to Hollywood...
's 1935 film The 39 StepsThe 39 Steps (1935 film)The 39 Steps is a British thriller film directed by Alfred Hitchcock, loosely based on the adventure novel The Thirty-nine Steps by John Buchan. The film stars Robert Donat and Madeleine Carroll....
and it is featured even more prominently in the 1959 remakeThe 39 Steps (1959 film)The 39 Steps is a 1959 British thriller film directed by Ralph Thomas, starring Kenneth More and Taina Elg. It is a remake of the 1935 Alfred Hitchcock film, based on the novel The Thirty-Nine Steps by John Buchan....
of the same film, although there is no reference to the bridge in the book by John Buchan upon which the films are based.
- The bridge featured in posters advertisingAdvertisingAdvertising is a form of communication used to persuade an audience to take some action with respect to products, ideas, or services. Most commonly, the desired result is to drive consumer behavior with respect to a commercial offering, although political and ideological advertising is also common...
the soft drinkSoft drinkA soft drink is a non-alcoholic beverage that typically contains water , a sweetener, and a flavoring agent...
Barr's Irn Bru, with the sloganSloganA slogan is a memorable motto or phrase used in a political, commercial, religious and other context as a repetitive expression of an idea or purpose. The word slogan is derived from slogorn which was an Anglicisation of the Scottish Gaelic sluagh-ghairm . Slogans vary from the written and the...
: Made in Scotland, from girderGirderA girder is a support beam used in construction. Girders often have an I-beam cross section for strength, but may also have a box shape, Z shape or other forms. Girder is the term used to denote the main horizontal support of a structure which supports smaller beams...
s
- The bridge was lit up red for BBCBBCThe British Broadcasting Corporation is a British public service broadcaster. Its headquarters is at Broadcasting House in the City of Westminster, London. It is the largest broadcaster in the world, with about 23,000 staff...
's Comic Relief in 2005.
- A countdown clock to the millennium was placed on the bridge in 1998.
- The BridgeThe Bridge (novel)The Bridge is a novel by Scottish author Iain Banks. It was published in 1986. The book switches between three protagonists, John Orr, Alex, and the Barbarian. It is an unconventional love story.-Plot summary:...
, a novel by Iain BanksIain BanksIain Banks is a Scottish writer. He writes mainstream fiction under the name Iain Banks, and science fiction as Iain M. Banks, including the initial of his adopted middle name Menzies...
, is mainly set on a fictionalised version of the bridge.
- In Alan TuringAlan TuringAlan Mathison Turing, OBE, FRS , was an English mathematician, logician, cryptanalyst, and computer scientist. He was highly influential in the development of computer science, providing a formalisation of the concepts of "algorithm" and "computation" with the Turing machine, which played a...
's most famous paper about artificial intelligenceArtificial intelligenceArtificial intelligence is the intelligence of machines and the branch of computer science that aims to create it. AI textbooks define the field as "the study and design of intelligent agents" where an intelligent agent is a system that perceives its environment and takes actions that maximize its...
, one of the challenges put to the subject of an imagined Turing testTuring testThe Turing test is a test of a machine's ability to exhibit intelligent behaviour. In Turing's original illustrative example, a human judge engages in a natural language conversation with a human and a machine designed to generate performance indistinguishable from that of a human being. All...
is "Please write me a sonnet on the subject of the Forth Bridge". The test subject in Turing's paper answers, "Count me out on this one. I never could write poetry".
- Sébastien FoucanSebastien FoucanSébastien Foucan is a French actor of Guadeloupean descent. Along with David Belle he is considered one of the founders of parkour and is the creator of free running. He is known as a representative of, and ambassador for parkour and free running to many countries...
, a French freerunnerFree runningFreerunning is a form of urban acrobatics in which participants, known as freerunners , use the city and rural landscape to perform movements through its structures...
, crawled along one of the highest points of the bridge, without a harness, for the Jump Britain documentary made by Channel 4Channel 4Channel 4 is a British public-service television broadcaster which began working on 2 November 1982. Although largely commercially self-funded, it is ultimately publicly owned; originally a subsidiary of the Independent Broadcasting Authority , the station is now owned and operated by the Channel...
.
- LinusLinus van PeltLinus van Pelt is a character in Charles M. Schulz's comic strip Peanuts. The best friend of Charlie Brown, Linus is also the younger brother of Lucy van Pelt and older brother of Rerun van Pelt. He first appeared on September 19, 1952; however, he was not mentioned by name until three days later....
points out the bridge from the airplane in the 1980 Peanuts film, Bon Voyage, Charlie Brown (And Don't Come Back!!) as they approached Heathrow Airport. The Forth Bridge is 273 nautical miles (505.6 km) north of Heathrow, and is often visible on the approach to Edinburgh AirportEdinburgh AirportEdinburgh Airport is located at Turnhouse in the City of Edinburgh, Scotland, and was the busiest airport in Scotland in 2010, handling just under 8.6 million passengers in that year. It was also the sixth busiest airport in the UK by passengers and the fifth busiest by aircraft movements...
.
- The bridge is included in the video game Grand Theft Auto: San AndreasGrand Theft Auto: San AndreasGrand Theft Auto: San Andreas is a 2004 open world action video game developed by British games developer Rockstar North and published by Rockstar Games. It is the third 3D game in the Grand Theft Auto video game franchise, the fifth original console release and eighth game overall...
by Edinburgh-based developer Rockstar NorthRockstar NorthRockstar North is a British video game developer based in Edinburgh, Scotland, best known for creating the Grand Theft Auto and Lemmings franchises in its earlier guise as DMA....
. Renamed the Kincaid Bridge, it serves as the main railway bridge of the fictional city of San Fierro, and appears alongside a virtual Forth Road Bridge.
- The bridge inspired the design of the "Tubeline Bridge" which connects Route 8 with Route 9 in the Pokémon Black and WhitePokémon Black and Whiteare role-playing games developed by Game Freak and published by Nintendo for the Nintendo DS. They are the first installments in the fifth generation of the Pokémon series of role-playing games...
video games.
Further reading
- Charles Matthew Norrie (1956). Bridging the Years - a short history of British Civil Engineering. Edward Arnold (Publishers) Ltd.
- Arnold Koerte, Firth of Forth, Firth of Tay, Birkhauser Verlag (1992), ISBN 0-8176-2444-9
- New Civil EngineerNew Civil EngineerNew Civil Engineer is the weekly magazine of the Institution of Civil Engineers, the UK chartered body that oversees the practice of civil engineering in the UK. It is published by EMAP who acquired the title and editorial control from the ICE in 1995...
5 February 2004, page 18. - Peter R. Lewis, Beautiful Railway Bridge of the Silvery Tay: Reinvestigating the Tay Bridge Disaster of 1879, Tempus, 2004, ISBN 0-7524-3160-9.
- Charles McKeanCharles McKeanCharles McKean is Professor of Scottish Architectural History at the University of Dundee.Charles McKean was formerly Secretary and Treasurer of the Royal Incorporation of Architects in Scotland. Educated at Fettes College, the University of Poitiers , and the University of Bristol, from 1977 to...
, Battle for the North: The Tay and Forth Bridges and the 19th Century Railway Wars, Granta Books, (August 7, 2006), ISBN 1-86207-852-1. - Elspeth Wills, The Briggers - The Story of the Men who built the Forth Bridge, Birlinn, 2009, ISBN-978-1-84158-781-5.
External links
- Forth Bridges Visitor Centre Trust - Rail Bridge Main
- Forth Bridge Memorial
- Poetry Map of Scotland Firth of Forth: "Construction of the Forth Bridge"