I remember one collapsing in the 1966 floods. An archer was employed by teh GPO to get a line across for to pull telephone cables across. A bailey bridge was built quickly by the military to replace it, and I think it's still in use.
It's almost certainly not possible for the military to do the same again. Privatisation will have removed that ability.
Are all the pubs at the other side of the river to your bungalow Tim?
If they are you need a bridge just in case.
Adam
snipped-for-privacy@privacy.net wibbled on Monday 23 November 2009 12:53
In effect.
BT would ring up the Army and say: "how about a bridge then" The Army would say: "Sure - happy to help. Equipment and men, hmm, that'll be £££££, payable in advance please as you have the face of a deadbeat"
This is interesting. I have a beck (mountain stream) about 20 feet from my house - the land slopes away from the house and beck so there is no chance of flooding us. However in 2005 it over-topped twice, so the farmer whose land it floods came by with a JCB and dredged it. He didn't widen it, nor did he deepen it much, but he did re-distribute the stones on the bottom. This weekend it filled right up, we were convinced that it would over-top, but it didn't. My theory is that the farmer's tidying of the beck made it flow better.
Of course, the water all ended up in Cockermouth about 8 miles downstream and then went to Workington to wash their bridges and Bobby away.
I'm thinking of inventing some kind of chuck-in generator for days like these. There is plenty of energy there.
R.
ARWadsworth wibbled on Monday 23 November 2009 13:28
Thankfully the Ostrich is on the right side of the barrier and the George is high enough and can be reached by circuitous means.
And Sainsburys have a special on decent beers, so the larder is full :)
Sadly, the railway is high out of the flood zone, otherwise the missus could get a week off...
Collapsed bridge will take 'a number of weeks' to repair
Dosen`t look like anything sime car body filer wouldn`t cope with ;-)
Cheers Adam
superbeam.co.uk=A0www.superbeam.com=A0www.greentram.com
Langwathby, near Penrith. 1968 I think, and I drove over it only a few years ago.
That sounds like the bridge over the Eden on the Alston to Penrith road at Langwathby.
employed by
Correct, and that "temporary" girder bridge is it is still there. It was closed for a while on Thursday/Friday.
That isn't a Bailey bridge. It is a Callender-Hamilton bridge.
The Callender-Hamilton is a very different beast. It pre-dated the Bailey design. It is stronger than a simple Bailey bridge and can carry heavier loads and/or span significantly longer distances.
However, it takes much longer to construct than a Bailey bridge because it is made of many individual pieces of galvanised steel bolted together with thousands of galvanised bolts which all need to be torqued up. The Bailey bridge is prefabricated in panels which are joined together with dowel pins - an instant fix. Only the cross beams that carry the deck need to be bolted.
The Callender company later became part of BICC (British Insulated Callenders Cables) which spawned the engineering contractor Balfour Beatty. So Balfour Beatty holds the rights to the Callender Hamilton bridge system while Fairfield Mabey holds the rights to the later variants of the Bailey design.
The designer of the Callender-Hamilton bridge, Archibald Milne Hamilton, successfully sued Donald Bailey, the designer of the Bailey bridge, for breach of patent. However, it is fair to say that the Bailey bridge's panel design was superior in that it allowed rapid construction without needing heavy lifting equipment, which meant it was much more successful as a military bridging system.
In message , "dennis@home" writes
Now, now, that's not at all nice Dennis
you retard
Don't call Dennis a retard. It's offensive to retards.
We were somewhere around Barstow, on the edge of the desert, when the drugs began to take hold. I remember "Dave Liquorice" saying something like:
The story I heard at the time (1962, from my Dad) was it was supposed to be temporary, but it deteriorated so little and took minimal maintenance it just got left in place as it was cheap and doing a good job. I suppose, in the 50s/60s, there would have been a few of them on the surplus market.
distinctly
there
Sounds just like Langwathby Bridge. There were a few attempts to get money from the millenium fund to replace it but it never happend. TBH it's strong enough for the traffic and it's not a very busy road so the lights aren't a problem either. Less so since the 2005 flood and they replaced the simple timed sequence set with ones with microwave senors to detect vechicles still on the bridge(*) and approaching stuff.
(*) Drivers of artics who didn't know the road/bridge could some times mess up getting the trailer aligned with the bridge, which is only just wide enough, on the hard left turn that is required to get onto the bridge.
:-)
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