OT The Forth Bridge

[Mike Tomlinson]

En el artículo , Bill Wright escribió:

It's not that, individual strands of cable are snapping in the main stays (the horizontal runs that span the bridge). Because snapped strands are hard to detect, they can't tell how many have gone.

The problem is caused by the Scottish weather - the cables are corroding and snapping on the inside. Eventually, you're going to have the outer (painted, protected) cable with a rotten core.

There's supposedly a proposal in place to blow low-humidity air into the gaps in the cable to reduce the speed of corrosion but I haven't been able to find out more. I have a feeling it's too late to save the bridge now.

[Tim+]

A proposal? It's been going for years.

Tim

[Mike Tomlinson]

En el artículo , Tim+ escribió:

Hasn't worked, has it? Seems a bit Heath Robinson to me.

[polygonum]

Have long thought that half the answer to this type of problem is half a bridge.

Imagine, having built the FRB with N and S decks, a modest number of years later you had built HALF its replacement. You than could have three decks available - in any combination of being in use in either direction or in maintenance.

Then you build another replacement... and are ready to let the original get demolished (or fundamentally rebuilt in situ).

[ed]

No doubt one of the issues is that FRB uses the 2nd best location to cross the firth. So a new bridge would have to use the third best site.

If this link can fail so could the others in the mirror image places. I also imagine that part of the issue is that this link is doing something useful in the structure, at least some of the time. Therefore during its re placement some significant temporary structure will have to be added before hand. This must be a nightmare repair scenario only a collapse would be wo rse.

[damduck-egg]

Surely one of you former electronic wizards with a shed full of old bits has a Bridge Rectifier that they can send up there.

G.Harman

[Indy Jess John]

Something like this:

There is one in Scotland to copy - The Bridge of Oich.

Jim

[newshound]

Completely different, see Tim's link

[Peter Duncanson]

A cunning plan!

[Clive George]

Very good :-)

[Ian Jackson]

In message , [e-mail] writes

Brilliant!

[Bill Wright]

I thought you knew. He had a perforated appendix so he swallowed a tube of No More Nails.

Bill

[ss]

I am sure they did that about 3 years back.

[nemo]

But that would only allow one-way traffic.

[Tim+]

What have the cables got to do with the current problem? Nothing!

Tim

[Graham.]

If it's a replacement, one would expect it to be built in the same place.

[Mike Tomlinson]

En el artículo , [e-mail] escribió:

There's eight of them, two at each corner close to the towers. They basically hold the lower deck up, hence the panic.

[Mike Tomlinson]

En el artículo , Tim+ escribió:

Everything. It's a 50 year old bridge which has carried far beyond its designed amount of traffic for many years and now is showing signs of its age and workload. In other words, it's almost worn out.

Ever heard of context?

[Mike Tomlinson]

En el artículo , ss escribió:

Thanks, I'll have to google some more.

[Tim Watts]

Sir John Fowler and Sir Benjamin Baker must be laughing their ghostly ends off :)

Even Ironbridge isn't doing too badly, considering it dates from 1779.