Forth Bridge factoids

■ The first train to cross the Bridge was driven by a woman. Candida Louise Hay (née Bartolucci), the Marchioness of Tweeddale, was at the controls of this lucky locomotive on January 24 1890.

■ While commonly being attributed as another major steel structure and thus a contemporary of the Forth Bridge, Paris’ Eiffel Tower (completed in 1889) was actually built using the more primitive wrought iron (a common building material at the time). You could fit six Eiffel Towers within the Forth Bridge’s main structure, and even Gustave Eiffel himself loved the Bridge, declaring it to be “the greatest wonder of the century”.

■ In the years following its opening, the Bridge had a 40mph speed limit for all services, although by many accounts this was not well observed by drivers (presumably reassured by the gargantuan structure they were passing over). Today, the speed limit is 50mph for passenger multiple units, and 20mph for heavy trains.

■ The total painted area of the Forth Bridge is 230,000 square metres - that’s about as big as the floor space in New York’s Grand Central station, or the equivalent of 33 football pitches.

■ Its original owner, the Forth Bridge Railway Company, was never bought out by the North British Railway and thus avoided being absorbed at the time of Grouping in 1923, remaining in place until nationalisation in 1948.

■ To make sure nobody forgets it’s there, more than 1,000 floodlights were installed on the Forth Bridge in 1991, connected by nearly 25 miles of cabling. 500 of these are located at the base of each cantilever, pointing upwards to give the impressive night-time vistas we’ve become so familiar with.

■ The first electric light illuminating either North or South Queensferry was one attached to the Forth Bridge.

■ It is the only major structure not to have a dedicated reference number: underbridge ECN2/28 (Station Road, Dalmeny) is located immediately to the south, and underbridge ECN2/29 (Old Edinburgh Road, North Queensferry) is located immediately to the north. It is known by most simply as “the Bridge”. However, it did briefly have its own namesake railway station, with “Forth Bridge” being renamed “Dalmeny for Forth Bridge” on April 28 1890. The station is still open today as Dalmeny.

■ The second iteration of the Quebec Bridge’s design leaned heavily on the experience gained during construction of the Forth Bridge, with Irish engineer Maurice FitzMaurice (who worked closely with Benjamin Baker on the Bridge) holding a role on the committee into the infamous and tragic collapse of the first Quebec Bridge.