Remember when ... The Forth Road Bridge, taking shape in 1961

WORK on the Forth Road Bridge began on the first day of September, 1958. It was, said this newspaper in an editorial, “the first of the really big projects which are intended to give Scotland a road network commensurate with the needs of the mid-twentieth century”.

That day, one of our reporters visited South Queensferry, a burgh of some 2,700 inhabitants. He found a sense of quiet optimism in the air, an impression reinforced when, as he examined a scale model of the bridge in the town clerk’s office, he happened to run into Provost James A. Lawson, who had been a member of the original Forth road bridge promotion committee in 1930.

Provost Lawson said he hoped South Queensferry would quickly grow into a popular tourist centre once the new bridge was operational. The attractions should start as soon as works appeared above the water, he added.

“There will undoubtedly be many interesting operations to draw sightseers”, he said. “When the railway bridge was built people from Edinburgh and around came in their hundreds to Queensferry in four-in-hands, hansom cabs, and the like.

“Now it will be motor cars and buses, and our big worry is about parking spaces”.

The provost also said he wanted to see a number of good hotels springing up on the high ground which would be served by the new approach roads”.

Pictured above is the bridge as it was three years later, in 1961.

As the Forth Bridges website explains: “1961 saw the completion of the main cable anchorages, bored into the rock on both shores, and the two main towers.

“The spinning of the main cables also got under way but – as the method of spinning several wires at a time back and forth across the estuary to gradually build up the main cable was new in Europe – a special training school had to set up in South Queensferry.”

The £19.5 million bridge was opened by the Queen on September 4, 1964.