For the nearby road bridge, see Forth Road Bridge.

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 km (9 miles) west of central Edinburgh. It is often called the "Forth Rail Bridge" to distinguish it from the Forth Road Bridge. The bridge connects Scotland's capital Edinburgh with the Kingdom of Fife, and acts as a major artery connecting the north-east and south-east of the country. Described as "the one internationally recognised Scottish landmark",^[1] it may be nominated by the British government as a UNESCO World Heritage Site.^[2] The bridge and its associated railway infrastructure is owned by Network Rail Infrastructure Limited. Image File history File linksMetadata Download high resolution version (1536x2048, 1465 KB) Summary The Forth Railway Bridge taken by Euchiasmus (me) on 27th June 2005 from the northern end. ... This article is about the area in Scotland. ... The Firth of Forth from Calton Hill The Forth Bridges cross the Firth Satellite photo of the Firth and the surrounding area Map of the Firth Firth of Forth (Scottish Gaelic: Linne Foirthe) is the estuary or firth of Scotlands River Forth, where it flows into the North Sea... The Firth of Forth from Calton Hill The Forth Bridges cross the Firth Satellite photo of the Firth and the surrounding area Map of the Firth Firth of Forth (Scottish Gaelic: Linne Foirthe) is the estuary or firth of Scotlands River Forth, where it flows into the North Sea... For other uses, see Edinburgh (disambiguation). ... Inchgarvie is a small island in the Firth of Forth to the east of Scotland. ... This article is about the area in Scotland. ... This article is about the country. ... Balfour Beatty plc (LSE: BBY) is a British based construction and civil engineering company based in central London. ... Network Rail is a British not for dividend company limited by guarantee whose principal asset is Network Rail Infrastructure Limited, a company limited by shares. ... This article does not cite any references or sources. ... Annual average daily traffic, abbrevated AADT, is a term used primarily in transportation planning and transportation engineering. ... is the 63rd day of the year (64th in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar. ... Year 1890 (MDCCCXC) was a common year starting on Wednesday (link will display the full calendar) of the Gregorian calendar (or a common year starting on Monday of the Julian calendar). ... Map of Earth showing lines of latitude (horizontally) and longitude (vertically), Eckert VI projection; large version (pdf, 1. ... Map of Earth showing lines of latitude (horizontally) and longitude (vertically), Eckert VI projection; large version (pdf, 1. ... The Forth Road Bridge is a suspension bridge in east central Scotland. ... This article does not cite any references or sources. ... This article is about the edifice (including an index to articles on specific bridge types). ... The Firth of Forth from Calton Hill The Forth Bridges cross the Firth Satellite photo of the Firth and the surrounding area Map of the Firth Firth of Forth (Scottish Gaelic: Linne Foirthe) is the estuary or firth of Scotlands River Forth, where it flows into the North Sea... This article is about the country. ... The Forth Road Bridge is a suspension bridge in east central Scotland. ... For other uses, see Edinburgh (disambiguation). ... The Forth Road Bridge is a suspension bridge in east central Scotland. ... Not to be confused with capitol. ... This article is about the area in Scotland. ... UNESCO (United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization) is a specialized agency of the United Nations established in 1945. ... Wikipedia does not yet have an article with this exact name. ... Network Rail is a British not for dividend company limited by guarantee whose principal asset is Network Rail Infrastructure Limited, a company limited by shares. ...

History

Forth Bridge at night

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. On Bouch's death the project was handed over to Sir John Fowler and Sir Benjamin Baker, who designed a structure that was built by Sir William Arrol's company between 1883 and 1890. Baker - "one of the most remarkable civil engineers Britain ever produced" - and his colleague Allan Stewart received the major credit for design and overseeing construction work. Image File history File linksMetadata Download high resolution version (1280x960, 310 KB) Summary Taken by Gregory Kullberg on March 10, 2003 Licensing I, the creator of this work, hereby grant the permission to copy, distribute and/or modify this document under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License, Version... Image File history File linksMetadata Download high resolution version (1280x960, 310 KB) Summary Taken by Gregory Kullberg on March 10, 2003 Licensing I, the creator of this work, hereby grant the permission to copy, distribute and/or modify this document under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License, Version... Sir Thomas Bouch (25 February 1822 - 30 October 1880) was a railway engineer in Victorian Britain. ... A view of the Tay Bridge from Dundee Tay Bridge, central section The Tay Bridge (sometimes unofficially the Tay Rail Bridge) is a railway bridge approximately two and a quarter miles (three and a half kilometres) long[1] that spans the Firth of Tay in Scotland, between the city of... Sir John Fowler (July 15, 1817–November 10, 1898) was born in Wadsley, South Yorkshire, England. ... Sir Benjamin Baker (March 31, 1840 - May 19, 1907), English engineer, was born near Bath in 1840, and, after receiving his early training in a South Wales ironworks, became associated with Sir John Fowler in London. ... William Arrol (1839 - 1913) was a Scottish civil engineer and bridge builder. ...

Construction

The bridge is, even today, regarded as an engineering marvel. It is 2.5 km (1.5 miles) in length, and the double track is elevated 46 m (approx. 150 ft) above high tide. It consists of two main spans of 1,710 ft, two side spans of 675 ft, 15 approach spans of 168 ft, and five of 25 ft.^[3] Each main span comprises two 680 ft cantilever arms supporting a central 350 ft span girder bridge). The three great four-tower cantilever structures are 340 ft (104 m) tall, each 70 ft 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 ft. 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 has been revised upwards to 98.^[4] Eight men were saved by boats positioned in the river under the working areas. Engineering is the applied science of acquiring and applying knowledge to design, analysis, and/or construction of works for practical purposes. ... The cantilevered beam (green) projects from its supports (blue), balanced by the structure (red block), which supports the load (red arrow). ... In 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. ...

Forth Bridge

Hundreds more 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. Download high resolution version (2272x1704, 631 KB) Wikipedia does not have an article with this exact name. ... Download high resolution version (2272x1704, 631 KB) Wikipedia does not have an article with this exact name. ...

The Forth road and rail bridges; the rail bridge is on the right.

More than 55,000 tons of steel were used, as well as 18,122 m³ of granite and over eight million rivets. The bridge was opened on March 4, 1890 by the Prince of Wales, later King Edward VII, who drove home the last rivet, which was gold plated and suitably inscribed.^[5] A contemporary materials analysis of the bridge, circa 2002, found that the steel in the bridge is of good quality, with little variation. Image File history File links Download high resolution version (955x660, 248 KB) Aerial photograph of both bridges across the River Forth in Scotland. ... Image File history File links Download high resolution version (955x660, 248 KB) Aerial photograph of both bridges across the River Forth in Scotland. ... Close-up of granite from Yosemite National Park, valley of the Merced River Quarrying granite for the Mormon Temple, Utah Territory. ... A rivetted buffer beam on a steam locomotive A rivet is a mechanical fastener consisting of a smooth cylindrical shaft with heads on either end, the second one formed in position. ... is the 63rd day of the year (64th in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar. ... Year 1890 (MDCCCXC) was a common year starting on Wednesday (link will display the full calendar) of the Gregorian calendar (or a common year starting on Monday of the Julian calendar). ... Edward VII (Albert Edward; 9 November 1841 – 6 May 1910) was King of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland, King of the Commonwealth Realms, and the Emperor of India. ...

The use of a cantilever in bridge design was not a new idea, but the scale of Baker's undertaking was a real pioneering effort, afterwards extensively 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. The cantilevered beam (green) projects from its supports (blue), balanced by the structure (red block), which supports the load (red arrow). ... A view of the Tay Bridge from Dundee Tay Bridge, central section The Tay Bridge (sometimes unofficially the Tay Rail Bridge) is a railway bridge approximately two and a quarter miles (three and a half kilometres) long[1] that spans the Firth of Tay in Scotland, between the city of...

Where possible, the bridge has used natural features such as Inchgarvie, an island, the promontories on either side of the firth at this point, and also the high banks of the land on either side. Inchgarvie is a small island in the Firth of Forth to the east of Scotland. ... Firth is the Scots word used to denote various coastal waters in Scotland. ...

Maintaining the Forth Bridge

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. Maintenance of the bridge proved a hazardous occupation and on average one workman a year lost his life until 1994^{[citation needed]}. 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 special sleepers known as waybeams. 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 under contract to Network Rail.^[6] Up to 190-200 trains per day crossed the bridge in 2006; the structure connects north and south Scotland by rail.^[7] "Painting the Forth Bridge" is a colloquial term for a never-ending task (a modern rendering of the myth of Sisyphus), 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 contemporary maintenance, such a practice never existed, although under British Rail management, and before, the bridge had a permanent maintenance crew. Balfour Beatty plc (LSE: BBY) is a British based construction and civil engineering company based in central London. ... Network Rail is a British not for dividend company limited by guarantee whose principal asset is Network Rail Infrastructure Limited, a company limited by shares. ... Sisyphus by Titian, 1549 In Greek mythology, Sisyphus (Σίσυφος) (IPA: ) was a king punished in the underworld by being set to roll a huge boulder up a hill throughout eternity. ... 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. New Civil Engineer was a co-founder of the British Construction Industry Awards. ... This article is about the defunct entity British Railways, which later traded as British Rail. The History of rail transport in Great Britain is covered in its own article. ...

Firth of Forth road & rail bridges

A contemporary repainting of the bridge commenced with a contract award in 2002, for a schedule of work expected to continue until March 2009, involving the application of 20,000 m² of paint at a cost estimate of £10M a year. This new coat of paint is expected to have a life of 20 years. Image File history File linksMetadata Download high-resolution version (13750x1915, 3636 KB) Panorama of rail and road bridges crossing the Firth of Forth, taken from Queensferry near Edinburgh, Scotland, UK. File history Legend: (cur) = this is the current file, (del) = delete this old version, (rev) = revert to this old version. ... Image File history File linksMetadata Download high-resolution version (13750x1915, 3636 KB) Panorama of rail and road bridges crossing the Firth of Forth, taken from Queensferry near Edinburgh, Scotland, UK. File history Legend: (cur) = this is the current file, (del) = delete this old version, (rev) = revert to this old version. ...

Competition

The Forth Road Bridge is another popular crossing of the Firth. New competition comes from a hovercraft crossing.[1] The Forth Road Bridge is a suspension bridge in east central Scotland. ... A Hovercraft, or Air-Cushion Vehicle (ACV), is an amphibious vehicle or craft, designed to travel over any sufficiently smooth surface - land or water - supported by a cushion of slowly moving, low-pressure air, ejected downwards against the surface close below it. ...

The new Stirling-Alloa-Kincardine rail link under construction will divert coal trains from the bridge. Instead they will travel via Stirling to Longannet Power Station. With this, there is a possibility that freight restrictions will be lifted and the potential of increasing trains from 10 tph (trains per hour) to 12 tph. Under Scottish Executive funding and to relieve congestion on the Forth Railway Bridge the line between Stirling and Alloa is being reopened to passenger traffic. ... Longannet Power Station is a large coal-fired power station on the upper Firth of Forth near the Scottish town of Kincardine. ...

Popular culture

On a 2004 £1 coin.

• The bridge is featured prominently in a scene in Alfred Hitchcock's 1935 film The 39 Steps and even more so in the 1959 remake.
• The bridge long featured in posters advertising the soft drink Barr's Irn Bru, with the slogan: Made in Scotland, from girders
• The bridge was lit up red for BBC's Comic Relief in 2005
• A countdown clock to the millennium was placed on the bridge in 1998.
• The Bridge, a novel by Iain Banks, is mainly set on a fictionalised version of the bridge.
• In Alan Turing's most famous paper about artificial intelligence, one of the challenges put to the subject of an imagined Turing test 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".^[8]
• The Kincaid Rail bridge in the video game Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas is based on this bridge. The designer, Rockstar North, is based in Edinburgh.
• The process of painting the bridge presumably inspired Tom Stoppard's radio play Albert's Bridge.

Original rivet from the Forth Bridge.

• Sebastien Foucan, a French freerunner, crawled along one of the highest points of the bridge, without a harness, for the Jump Britain documentary made by Channel 4.
• Linus 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 north of Heathrow, but is generally visible on the approach to Edinburgh Airport.

Reverse of a 2004 Forth Rail Bridge £1 coin. ... Reverse of a 2004 Forth Rail Bridge £1 coin. ... This article discusses the British One Pound circulating coin issued since 1983, only. ... This article or section includes a list of works cited or a list of external links, but its sources remain unclear because it lacks in-text citations. ... The 39 Steps is a 1935 film directed by Alfred Hitchcock, based on the adventure novel The Thirty-Nine Steps by John Buchan. ... The 39 Steps is a 1959 thriller directed by Ralph Thomas, starring Kenneth More and Tania Elg based on the novel The Thirty-Nine Steps by John Buchan. ... “Advert” redirects here. ... A soft drink is a drink that contains no alcohol. ... A.G. Barr plc (LSE Stockcode:BAG) is a British soft drinks manufacturer, based in Glasgow, Scotland. ... Irn-Bru (pronounced [aɪɚn brʉː]) is a popular carbonated soft drink produced in Scotland. ... Look up slogan in Wiktionary, the free dictionary. ... This page is a candidate to be copied to Wiktionary. ... For other uses, see BBC (disambiguation). ... Comic relief is the inclusion of a humorous character or scene or witty dialogue in an otherwise serious work, often to relieve tension. ... The Bridge is a novel by Scottish author Iain Banks. ... Iain Menzies Banks (officially Iain Banks, born on 16 February 1954 in Dunfermline, Fife) is a Scottish writer. ... Alan Mathison Turing, OBE, FRS (23 June 1912 – 7 June 1954) was an English mathematician, logician, and cryptographer. ... Bold text[[Link title]] “AI” redirects here. ... For the Doctor Who novel named after the test, see The Turing Test (novel). ... Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas is the fifth video game in the Grand Theft Auto series. ... Rockstar North Limited (formerly DMA Design Limited) is a Scottish developer of computer and video games founded by David Jones in Dundee and presently located in Leith Street, Edinburgh, Scotland. ... Sir Tom Stoppard, OM, CBE (born as Tomáš Straussler on July 3, 1937)[1] is an Academy Award winning British playwright of more than 24 plays. ... Image File history File linksMetadata Download high-resolution version (2048x1536, 881 KB) Original rivet from the Forth Bridge. ... Image File history File linksMetadata Download high-resolution version (2048x1536, 881 KB) Original rivet from the Forth Bridge. ... Foucan on the run in Casino Royale. ... This article is about the physical art. ... This article is about the British television station. ... Linus is a common name for people or things. ... This article contains a trivia section. ... London Heathrow Airport (IATA airport code: LHR, ICAO airport code: EGLL, and often simply Heathrow) is the United Kingdoms busiest and best-connected airport. ... Edinburgh Airport Currently Scotlands busiest(IATA: EDI, ICAO: EGPH) is located in Edinburgh, Scotland, and, in 2008, was the seventh-busiest airport in the UK by passengers and the fifth busiest by aircraft movments. ...

References

1. ^ Keay, J. & Keay, J. (1994) Collins Encyclopaedia of Scotland. London. HarperCollins.ISBN 0-00-255082-2
2. ^ Historic Scotland - UK Tentative List Retrieved 03.01.2007.
3. ^ "Forth Rail Bridge Facts & Figures". Forth Bridges Visitors Centre Trust. Retrieved April 21, 2006.
4. ^ "Rail bridge death toll increases", BBC News, 2006-09-04. Retrieved on 2007-05-16. 
5. ^ Overview of Forth Bridge. The Gazetteer for Scotland. Retrieved April 21, 2006.
6. ^ "Balfour Beatty Awarded Forth Bridge Contract". Press Release. Balfour Beatty, 28 April 2002. Retrieved April 21, 2006.
7. ^ "The Forth Rail Bridge". Forth Bridges Visitors Centre Trust. Retrieved April 21, 2006.
8. ^ Turing, A. M. (1950). "Computing Machinery and Intelligence". Mind (59): 433-460. Retrieved on 2007-05-16. 

• 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 Engineer 5th 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.
• McKean, Charles, 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.

Year 2006 (MMVI) was a common year starting on Sunday of the Gregorian calendar. ... is the 247th day of the year (248th in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar. ... Year 2007 (MMVII) is the current year, a common year starting on Monday of the Gregorian calendar and the AD/CE era. ... May 16 is the 136th day of the year (137th in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar. ... is the 111th day of the year (112th in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar. ... Year 2006 (MMVI) was a common year starting on Sunday of the Gregorian calendar. ... Balfour Beatty plc (LSE: BBY) is a British based construction and civil engineering company based in central London. ... is the 118th day of the year (119th in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar. ... Also see: 2002 (number). ... is the 111th day of the year (112th in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar. ... Year 2006 (MMVI) was a common year starting on Sunday of the Gregorian calendar. ... is the 111th day of the year (112th in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar. ... Year 2006 (MMVI) was a common year starting on Sunday of the Gregorian calendar. ... Year 2007 (MMVII) is the current year, a common year starting on Monday of the Gregorian calendar and the AD/CE era. ... May 16 is the 136th day of the year (137th in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar. ... 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. New Civil Engineer was a co-founder of the British Construction Industry Awards. ...

External links

Wikimedia Commons has media related to:

Forth bridges

• Forth Bridges Visitor Centre Trust - Rail Bridge Main
• Forth Bridge Memorial
• Forth Rail Bridge in the Structurae database

Image File history File links Commons-logo. ... Structurae is an on-line database containing works of structural and civil engineering of all kinds such as Bridges, High-rise buildings, towers, dams, etc. ...