Fife and Scotland - the offbeat perspective

Edinburgh is the Capital City of Scotland and home to the devolved Scottish Parliament. It's the second largest city in Scotland and seventh most densly populated city in the United Kingdom. It's easily accessible from Fife by means of the Forth Rail Bridge and the Forth Road Bridge.

Prior to the existence of these bridges, travel to Edinburgh often meant usage of a ferry service first established in the eleventh century by Margaret, queen consort of King Malcolm Canmore III and where the deeply pious Margaret wanted a ferry service to transport religious pilgrims from Edinburgh to Dunfermline Abbey and St Andrews. This led to the establishment of two towns, namely North Queensferry (in Fife) and South Queensferry (in Lothian). The ferry continued to operate for eight hundred years until the day when the Forth Road Bridge was opened by HRH Queen Elizabeth II and the Duke of Edinbrgh on 4th September 1964.

The Forth Rail Bridge

The unique World famous cantilever structure (pictured above during its centenary year) was designed by Sir John Fowler and Sir Benjamin Baker, and built by Sir William Arrol & Co. between 1883 and 1890. It was opened on 4th March 1890 and was the first major structure to be entirely built of steel in Britain. During it's construction, over four hundred and fifty construction workers were injured and ninety-eight fatalities occurred.

It required 64,800 tons of high grade steel to build it and these came from two steel plants in Scotland with further supplies from another based in Wales and all using the recently developed Siemens-Martin process to ensure consistent quality of the steel.

The popular phrase 'like painting the Forth Bridge' meant reference to a task that was never completed. It was a widely held belief that a team of painters were permanently engaged in the process of flaking away old paint and applying new paint; a process that apparently took four years and when completed; the team would start all over again. This was never the case but recent metal analysis of the bridge has shown it to be quite solid and after the recent application of new technology paints, the bridge continues to be in regular service with many trains crossing over it every hour of every day. Given its present state, most engineers foresee a future use of between twenty-five and forty years.

By any standard, the iconic size, shape and structure is instantly recogniseable as a tribute to design and engineering skill as well as being one of the most remarkeable engineering feats in Scotand with more than a century of service to it's credit!

The Forth Road Bridge

When decisions about the Forth Road Bridge came to be considered. The result was a bridge where the central main span is over one thousand metres long with a total length just exceeding two thousand five hundred metres.

At the time of its construction, it was fourth largest span in the World and the longest outside of the United States of America. The bridge comprises 39,000 tonnes of steel and 115,000 cubic metres of concrete. Its width comprises a dual carriageway road with cycle and footpaths.

The main strung cables are nearly 600mm in diameter and each carries 13,800 tonnes of the bridge's load by means of 11,618 5mm diameter high tensile wires.

Originally designed to last one hundred and twenty years and conceived as a toll bridge handling about 30,000 vehicles per day in both directions, this capacity was and has been regularly exceed in recent times and where corrosion problems highlighted in similar bridge structures elsewhere in the World has prompted exhaustive testing, examination and re-evalution. Tolls were scrapped on 11th February 2008 and this has accelerated usage.

It is currently believed within engineering circles that bridges of this type may have lost between 8-10% of their weight carrying ability and the Forth Bridge has not been granted any special favour in this. Although measures have been taken to slow the corrosion effects, and including usage of humidifiers and other technology, it is currently thought that traffic limitations of some kind may be necessary from about 2013 onwards and where debate concerning a future replacement bridge has already begun.

Edinburgh City

As stated elsewhere on this web site, there is no desire to repeat information already prominently displayed elsewhere on the Internet and this is particularly true of Scottish cities and where a plethora of data already exists. The exceptions are where something of keen interest exist and is of unique value to readers of this web site. In the case of Edinburgh, much more information can be found on the EdinburghGuide.Com website.

Credits:
Photographs by Open Source and Author.
Text by Alandon