The silvery Tay

Above, the Queen Mother arrives on opening day. Right, Joseph Murray and Sonny Cunningham at work. Below, the Dundee landfall in 1964, with the much-missed Royal Arch still in place.

But the 76- year- old is in no doubt of the bridge’s quality of construction and longevity.

He added: “I think it will still be there in 100 years.”

Eddie Hill worked on the bridge from the first day to the last, and he too had a lucky escape on the supply line.

“It was heavy rain and one of the other workers had driven their puggy up behind me.

“I didn’t realise, crashed into it and fell right over the side.

“I landed on a pile of mud on the south bank. The tide was out, which was just as well, because I couldn’t swim!”

Eddie went to hospital where he had 17 stitches in his head and was warned not to go straight back to work.

He went home, fell over his new cooker, and burst all of his stitches.

“I had to go back to the hospital, where I was given a row for not listening. They didn’t believe it had happened at home!” ON August 18, 1966, the Tay Road Bridge was officially opened by the Queen Mother.

It was the culmination of just over three years of hard toil and labour by hundreds of hardy men.

The bridge, which had been

The bridge was completed at a cost of around £6 million (roughly £ 105 million in today’s money), not a bad price for the use it’s had.

Bridge supervisor Jim McDonald has seen a fair percentage of that traffic in his 34 years’ service.

But it’s not just a steady stream of vehicles he’s watched from his control room.

ON Thursday, the opening of the bridge will be replicated, and a fog horn will be sounded at 12.30pm, the time the Queen Mother officially opened the crossing.

Next Sunday, vintage cars and buses, Harley Davidson motorbikes and scooters will cross the bridge and be on display at Slessor Gardens. There will also be craft tents, children’s activities, food stalls, live entertainment and much more taking place from 10am to 4pm. mooted for decades before it was finally given the go ahead, takes motorists between Newport and Dundee.

It was designed by William Fairhurst and William Logan won the contract to build it.

“One day a trailer shed its load, which just so happened to be chickens!

“They were running all around the carriageway, with bridge workers chasing after them,” he smiled.

“Then there was the bull that escaped from a Dundee abattoir by jumping over a 6ft wall.

“It somehow made it into the city c e n t re and on to the northbound carriageway, but luckily no cars hit it.

“A vet was sent out to tranquilise it. Houdini, as we called the bull, was due to go back to the abattoir but Carla Lane, who wrote TV