£235,000,000 worth of steel and rivets. (Firth Of Forth Bridge)

Member Name: strawberrybonbon

Product:	Firth Of Forth Bridge
Date:	11/09/08 (307 review reads)
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The forth bridges are very well known all across the world and many tourists especially Chinese tourists venture to the site of the two bridges to take photos every year.

The rail bridge is famous for being the bridge that they never finish painting and rumour would have it that they paint from one side to the other then turn and head back, although that is not quite how it happens there is always some sort of painting going on at the massive structure.

Building of the Forth rail bridge was interrupted by the fact that the man in charge of building it was to be removed from the job after the failure of another of his structures, Sir Thomas Bouch, got as far as the laying of the foundation stone then news of the collapse of the Tay rail bridge that he had been responsible for meant his time building this bridge was over.

The project was handed over to Sir John Fowler and Sir Benjamin Baker and those two gentlemen gave us the amazing structure but not without cost. 57 lives were lost during the building of this huge bridge and many other injuries occurred, all in all there were 4,600 workers involved in the construction of the Forth rail bridge and in those days the loss of 57 lives from such a large group of workers on such a dangerous project was pretty much seen as par for the course.

The bridge which stretches one and a half miles across the river Forth was and still is seen as an engineering master piece, it took seven full years to build from 1883 to 1890 and used an astonishing 54,000 tonnes of steel and 6,500,000 rivets.

The total cost of the bridge was a lot more than had originally been planned for and ended up around £3,200,000, which in those days was of course an enormous amount of money to give you some idea of just how much here is the figure that the bridge would cost to build in today's climate... £235,000,000, yes that is a staggering two hundred and thirty five million pounds.

The bridge is of course still costing money as it has done every minute it has stood and current figures for its maintenance are reputed to stand around £10m a year, it has also had several refurbishments with the most recent being in 1998 which cost in the region of £40m. It is reputed that since building the bridge has cost over £400m to maintain although many people say it is more and many people say that figure is ridiculous and it is actually much less.

The bridge however much it cost to build and maintain has been a huge success and continues to be so with over 50 trains a day crossing it carrying millions of passengers a year, I have crossed this bridge god knows how many times and still marvel at it every time. It is starting to look a bit rough round the edges these days but that is mainly down to the ongoing maintenance work that is being done and if you look past that you will still see the amazing beautiful structure that is the Forth rail bridge in all its glory!

Summary: An awesome structure that has stood since 1890.