Forth Road Bridge View of driving machine for cable spinning

Description Forth Road Bridge View of driving machine for cable spinning

Date 8/1962

Collection Records of Sir William Arrol and Company Ltd, civil engineers, Glasgow, Scotland

Catalogue Number SC 550640

Category On-line Digital Images

Copy of D 18497 CT

Scope and Content Driving machine for cable spinning during construction of Forth Road Bridge, South/North Queensferry, Edinburgh The Forth Road Bridge, a suspension bridge spanning the River Forth, was commissioned in 1947 and designed 1947-58 by architects Sir Giles Gilbert Scott & Partners, with Mott, Hay & Anderson and Freeman Fox & Partners as consulting engineers. Construction began in 1958 and the bridge was officially opened by Her Majesty the Queen on 4 September 1964. This shows the driving machine, (with its red wheels in the foreground of the picture) on the shore at one end of the bridge. This is spinning strands of wire which were compacted into the cables which support the road surface. A catwalk for contractors to work from can be seen below the main cables. Spinning the cable for the bridge took nine months using a two-shift system of contractors working from 8.00am to 12 midnight. Work carried on without breaks, so tea and soup were delivered for the men to drink between passes of the spinning wheels. The cable was compacted within three weeks. This structure has been selected as one of Scotland's key 20th-century Modern architectural monuments. Source: RCAHMS contribution to SCRAN.

Permalink http://canmore.org.uk/collection/550640

File Format (TIF) Tagged Image File Format bitmap