Forth Bridge
GARETH DENNIS explores why Scotland’s iconic steel leviathan not only justifies its position as one of Seven Wonders of the Railway, it might well be one of the great wonders of the entire world
The latest in RAIL’s ‘Seven Wonders of the Railway’ focuses on one of the world’s most famous railway structures.
Built in the aftermath of one of the most infamous engineering failures in history, and at a time of faltering confidence in British economic prowess, the Forth Bridge stands tall as a testament to the longevity of railway transport.
At the time of its opening, it connected the cities of the Scottish Central Belt with the coalfields and ports of Fife and the north. Strength was the name of the game, with its tapered towers and high degree of structural redundancy intended to resist the most aggressive winds that nature could throw at it without so much as a flinch.
Today, the 2.5km (1.55-mile) bridge is considered a symbol of Scotland, and has made countless appearances in popular culture. I myself have a personal relationship with this astonishing piece of infrastructure - making my way between Aberdeenshire and Devon in the 1990s, in the back of dad’s Rover, the Forth Bridge marked the point at which a day’s drive became a longer holiday… and merited a peak of excitement to match.
I used to huff whenever he diverted us via Stirling (as he usually did on the way south),
and whoop as we turned towards Moffat, Edinburgh and the Forth crossing on the way north. The views across to the railway’s enviable pulpit above the water from the rather more austere Forth Road Bridge were spectacular, not least in the run-up to the new millennium when it had a gigantic countdown clock mounted upon it.
After moving to Edinburgh as a student, I could travel to see it with ease on the Number 43 bus to South Queensferry, and even had the privilege of abseiling off the southern approach viaduct for charity (more on this later).
There was no better inspiration for completing a degree in civil engineering than walking underneath the mighty blood-red beast that stood astride the great estuary cleaving North and South Queensferry apart, dramatically showing how the most hostile of Scottish geography could be tamed by the might of the railways.
Charged with erecting this vast masterpiece was Scottish civil engineering and construction company Sir William Arrol & Co, which called upon the very best in surveying, design, installation and assurance techniques available at the time. Some £ 3.2 million later (£400m in 2017 prices), it had completed the first major steel structure in the world, and one that would still be doing its job 130 years later.
The design was headed by two remarkable engineers. Sheffield-born John Fowler, already famous as lead engineer on the world’s first dedicated underground passenger line (London’s Metropolitan Railway), was ably partnered by Benjamin Baker of Frome (also a key collaborator on the Met, he would later pioneer the use of cast iron segments for deep “Tube” tunnels in London and beyond).
Both were the best of the best. Fowler had already been the youngest president of the Institution of Civil Engineers, and Baker would be president a few years after the Bridge opened - and their collective achievements far exceed others whose names may have remained more familiar.
It must be said that the safety record for the construction site was poor, with 73 attributable worker deaths compared with only 30 on New York’s Brooklyn Bridge that had been completed a few years earlier. Things have clearly improved for the better, but there’s still no room for complacency. During its
In 2015 (the year of its 125th anniversary), it was granted world heritage status by UNESCO, joining such celebrities as the Acropolis, the Great Wall of China, the Pyramids of Egypt and the Taj Mahal.
construction in the early 1960s, the Forth Road Bridge claimed seven lives. And no less tragically, one worker was killed in the construction of the new Queensferry Crossing in 2016.
Nevertheless, countless innovations were adopted across numerous disciplines during the works. Many were drawn up by William Arrol and Benjamin Baker themselves, and would be adopted in engineering projects across the world.
Much like its younger siblings, the Forth Bridge’s design and installation may have been led by British engineers, but across the ranks of workers there was a significant international representation. Given the number of civil engineering mega-projects being undertaken across the globe at that time, it is little wonder that the variety of skills required were in short supply, and justified travel from as far afield as the USA and Japan, as well as closer to home in Europe.
The volume of materials involved is astonishing, tapping into a hugely complex and diverse range of suppliers that spanned the country. The scale of this supply chain may be usefully revealed by the sources of steel used in the Bridge’s construction, which totalled 62,200 tonnes (some of which was used only in temporary works).
Some 6.5 million steel rivets, provided by the Clyde Rivet Company of Glasgow, weighed a hefty 4,200 tonnes. But that’s only for starters: 12,000 tonnes of structural steel came from Siemens’ steel works in south Wales, and a further 38,000 tonnes were supplied by the Steel Company of Scotland’s works (also based near Glasgow). 8,000 tonnes of structural steel were provided late-on in construction, by Dalzell’s Iron and Steel Works in Motherwell.
For comparison, Manchester’s new Ordsall Chord bridge, a leviathan in its own right when installed in 2017, weighed less than 600 tonnes.
As well as all that steel, a third of a million tonnes of masonry was used - filling a volume more than 25% greater than that of the Royal Albert Hall. So much Portland cement was required to stick it all together
that, on delivery from the Medway, up to 1,200 tonnes were stored at any one time in a huge barge. Interestingly, the vessel converted for this task was the Hougoumont - the last ship used to ‘export’ our thoroughbred convicts to Australia.
On its completion, the newly raised Bridge didn’t please everyone. The designer, writer and activist William Morris (a proponent of the usually ghastly Arts and Crafts style) certainly wasn’t a fan: “There never will be an architecture of iron, every improvement in machinery being uglier and uglier until they reach the supremest specimen of all ugliness - the Forth Bridge.” There were other loud and prominent critics.
However, the overwhelming feeling towards the Bridge was one of approval, awe and
pride (particularly in Scotland), and the limited negative press from its detractors was soon forgotten.
And it’s not just myself and a few other misty-eyed engineers who think the Bridge is a culturally significant and internationally unique location. It has been Grade A-listed since 1973, and in 2015 (the year of its 125th anniversary), it was granted world heritage status by UNESCO, joining such celebrities as the Acropolis, the Great Wall of China, the Pyramids of Egypt and the Taj Mahal.
At 521 metres each, Forth Bridge’s two main cantilever spans are the second-longest in the world, with Canada’s Quebec Bridge pipping it to the post by only 28 metres.
And despite its new protected status, the two tracks that the Bridge carries are intensively used, with as many as 240 daily scheduled services (including ten freight trains). That’s 25% more traffic than the East Coast Main Line has to carry between Doncaster and York.
Even with all of this traffic passing over it, the Bridge isn’t so much an inert structure as a living, breathing, hive of activity. A warren of footways, stairwells, lifts, platforms, bothies (small huts), cubby-holes, trapdoors and all manner of fixtures and fittings weaves along all levels of the Bridge.
And as the sun beats down and heats up the steel, it expands quite significantly, giving a rippling effect on some of the surfaces that is visible if you get up close. Small parts are regularly being replaced, and - yes, even after its big paint job between 2002 and 2011 - sections are still receiving a touch-up every now and then.
Jamie McLaren is Network Rail’s Assistant Asset Engineer for Structures in Scotland (a justifiably hefty title), and has the privilege of being in charge of both the Forth and Tay Bridges. “I’m learning about the Bridge every day - there’s still parts I’m finding that I didn’t know were there,” he says.
Much like the Bridge itself, Jamie’s role is huge. But his modesty belies an intimate knowledge of the structure - his is the last signature on the page for the regular structural examinations, which then inform where immediate or longer-term interventions are required.
“I’m looking over examination reports for the Bridge that are hundreds of pages long, whereas on a normal, everyday bridge you’d maybe be looking at six pages worth of detail.
“My duties include specifying work for the bridge, looking at long-term strategies as well as urgent repairs - just everything repair-wise on the bridge. Every single day we have our contractors out, carrying out steel repairs, painting and removing redundant assets that have been there for years but no longer get used.”
Back in 1995, British Rail claimed that the Bridge was costing £1m a year to maintain (£1.8m in 2017 prices), and so its successor at privatisation justified spending £ 40m to repair and repaint it.
But as was Railtrack’s style, it gave up on the task having spent most of the money, and a new contract for £140m was let to Balfour Beatty for a major programme of refurbishment that was only completed in 2011. So successful was this project that Balfour Beatty has remained Network Rail’s contractor in charge of maintaining the Forth Bridge ever since.
So how much is today’s annual maintenance budget, roughly speaking?
“We have an annual maintenance contract worth around £1m,” says McLaren. “The work carries on - maintenance contract after maintenance contract.”
If you take inflation into account, the refurbishment works have gained significant savings. But there’s no avoiding the fact that such a massive structure will always be tricky (and therefore costly) to maintain - for example, 4,000 tonnes of specialist scaffolding were used during the Bridge’s tenyear rejuvenation. Even so, £1m could be
Having world heritage status is something I’m very proud of. We gained world heritage status just after I started in the role, and it certainly made me feel a little more pride working here, doing what we do. Jamie McLaren, Assistant Asset Engineer for Structures in Scotland, Network Rail
deemed a bargain considering the strategic importance of the link.
Making this point to both funders and local politicians is another part of Jamie’s role: “There are many stakeholders involved with these major structures, and the job involves a fair bit of stakeholder management.”
He also gets to welcome visitors and guests from all walks of life to the Bridge (“the fun part!” as he puts it), ensuring that the public’s fascination with the structure is constantly rejuvenated.
And what does he think of the UNESCO world heritage site status?
“Having world heritage status is something I’m very proud of. We gained world heritage status just after I started in the role, and it certainly made me feel a little more pride working here, doing what we do.”
Thanks to the efforts of McLaren and his many colleagues, the Forth Bridge is still gainfully employed transporting trains across the Firth of Forth, without having to ‘faff about’ with ferries or dog-legging via Stirling. But dig into some of the numbers, and you’d be forgiven for thinking that the Bridge was moonlighting in a second job.
What am I on about? Well, in 2018 the Forth Bridge helped various charities raise a whopping £ 640,000, by enabling them to hold fundraising events on its numerous lofty podiums. And by the end of 2019, the total figure raised is set to exceed £ 3m. This is thanks in no small part to the support of Network Rail and Balfour Beatty.
Says McLaren: “The Forth Bridge is arguably Scotland’s most recognisable landmark, and these figures demonstrate the value that people place on being able to access the structure. We’re enormously proud to have been able to help our charity partners.”
The charities are pretty happy about it, too. “It is an honour to be able to work with Network Rail and Balfour Beatty to share this incredible event at the iconic bridge with our supporters,” says Jane-Claire Judson, chief executive of Chest Heart & Stroke Scotland.
Martin Crewe, the director of Barnardo’s Scotland (which organised the hugely successful #YourView2018 experience), agrees: “The success of the event allowed us to take 1,250 supporters up onto the viewing platform on the north cantilever of the Bridge, raising over £ 65,000.”
The feelings experienced by participants at these charity events is unparalleled (I can vouch for this as someone who climbed over one of its walkway’s parapets, overcame nature’s strongest instincts… and let go), and not just because of the colossal sensation of exposure you get when bracing against the wind whipping along the estuary.
Graham Clarkson, of the Rotary Club of
South Queensferry, summarises it nicely: “By permitting us to run an annual abseil from the Forth Bridge, Network Rail offers the club a perfect opportunity to show Rotary in action, benefiting numerous charities and giving people from all over the country a unique experience at a World Heritage site.”
As with the Christmas dinner event for the homeless (the team behind 2017’s dinner in Euston was given a Judges’ Special Award at RAIL’s National Rail Awards in 2018), the railway is full of examples of goodwill - some large, many small. All of us who know and love the industry must do a better job of shouting them from the rooftops, and where better than a scaffold platform mounted 110 metres above the Forth?
In this and in many other ways, the fortunes of the Bridge mirror those of the UK.
The need to fuel Britain’s empire at its greatest extent generated a further leap in traffic through the Edwardian period, and a strengthening scheme was initiated in 1913 (although the outbreak of war delayed completion until 1921).
Economic stagnation and a shrinking of public investment in the early 1990s was reflected in the condition of the Bridge. There are (perhaps apocryphal) tales of pieces of rust big enough to crush a car falling onto North Queensferry, and it was only the refurbishment of the structure through the 2000s that reversed decades of degradation.
Last year, as engineers attempted to squeeze every last drop of capacity out of the British rail network, a resignalling scheme was completed, allowing seamless bi-directional running (trains running the wrong way along the opposite track) to speed up recovery at times of disruption.
Even as we look to the electric-only Britain of the future, the Bridge is still moving with the times. Plans are afoot for electrification of the lines into Fife, and there’s a strong possibility that we’ll see wires across the Forth before the end of the 2020s (the bridge is already gaugecleared to W7, so this shouldn’t be overly complex).
Today, the Forth Bridge is one of three record-topping structures spanning the Forth at Queensferry, with each representing a subsequent century of civil engineering. It may be the eldest of the three, but I’d argue that it is also the best representative of what the future holds for transport infrastructure.
What is undoubtedly true is that the majestic and instantly recognisable Forth Bridge easily merits its position as one of the Seven Wonders of the Railway.