The road and rail bridges over the River Forth are probably
Scotland's most well known man-made sight. But the two bridge are going to
become three. The construction of the Forth Replacement Crossing is now
underway with completion planned for 2016. Roadworks have been going on for
some time but there is now progress on the bridge itself. The new bridge is a
cable stayed structure with three supports in the river. For the foundations
cassions have been installed. There are basically huge steel tubes that are sunk
through the river bed to the rock below and will be filled with concrete to
form a base for the bridge's towers.
The new bridge is required because the existing road bridge,
constructed in 1964, is suffering on-going corrosion and breakages in the main
suspension cables that will reduce its capacity to carry traffic in the future.
It's interesting that the rail bridge, completed in 1890, is now in good
condition after repairs and repainting and likely to be in service for the foreseeable
future.
This project should provide some interesting photographs in the next few years.
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| The Forth Rail & Road bridges |
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| On the right there are caissions near each bank and a jack up barge where a third cassion will be sunk. |
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| Cassions & jack up barge show where the bridges towers will be. |
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| Artist's impression of new bridge |
