"Transporter Bridges: an Illustrated History" by John Hannavy

Transporter Bridges by John Hannavy (Pen and Sword, 268pp, 2020) is, I think, the first book to bring these unusual structures together in a comprehensive record. Subtitled "An Illustrated History", this is indeed a highly pictorial and well-detailed account of what was a very short-lived type of structure. Nineteen were built between 1893 and 1916, before the growth in motor traffic made them a less attractive form of river crossing.

The concept of a transporter bridge dated back to the mid-19th century. At a time when tall boats still used major rivers, there were essentially four ways to transport vehicles across such an obstacle. Ferry boats were common, but could only carry a few vehicles at a time, and could be unreliable. Fixed bridges were the highest-capacity, most reliable solution, but expensive both in construction and land-take. Moveable bridges were, in their earlier years, complex and expensive, and suitable only for moderate spans. The transporter bridge could cover longer spans, but carrying loads more in line with those on a ferry.

Hannavy documents early proposals for transporter bridges in detail: H.N. Houghton's idea for a railway crossing in New York (1852); J.W. Morse's plan for a similar crossing (1869); Charles Smith's proposal in Middlesbrough (1873); and others.

However, the first proposal to be built was the Viscaya bridge at Portugalete near Bilbao, completed in 1893. The designers Alberto Palacio and Ferdinand Arnodin took out patents for the transporter concept, and Arnodin went on to complete eight more such bridges.

Hannavy's history covers most of the transporter bridges with relative brevity - I say relative as they all get plenty of detail. He takes the story right up to recent decades where new transporter bridges have been proposed (e.g. at Royal Victoria Dock, Nantes, Marseilles and Brest). Of these, the Royal Victoria Dock Bridge is the only that was built, but its transporter gondola was never installed.

Beyond the basic history, the book discusses the "Systeme Arnodin" in detail, and there are chapters covering five of the few surviving transporter spans at length as fine examples of the type: the Viscaya bridge, Newport Transporter Bridge, the Tees Transporter Bridge, Crosfield's Warrington Transporter Bridge (and its now-demolished sibling), and the Rochefort Bridge. A further chapter considers the Widnes-Runcorn Bridge, which was closed in 1961. All five of the transporter bridges ever built in the UK are therefore given close attention.

Each of these is covered thoroughly, with quotes from contemporary journals and an excellent variety of historic and recent photographs. Hannavy's research has clearly been in-depth. The chapter on the Rochefort bridge is particularly interesting, as it mainly documents the massive refurbishment project undertaken to prolong the life of the bridge and to restore it closer to the original Arnodin design.

In addition to the main chapters, the book concludes with a series of one-page summaries of all the known transporter bridges both built and unbuilt.

This is, without any doubt, the definitive book on transporter bridges, and essential for anyone with an interest in them. More generally, it should appeal to those with a broader interest in historic bridges. It is not entirely faultless, unfortunately, as there is no bibliography and no referencing of any sort. This is a shame for any serious researchers, but probably not a big issue for the more general reader.

Teesside Bridges: 1. Middlesbrough Transporter Bridge

I was very lucky recently to join a weekend study tour of the bridges and structures of north-east England, organised by the British Group of the International Association for Bridge and Structural Engineering (IABSE). Previous British IABSE study tours had taken participants to Switzerland and France. I had greatly enjoyed the Swiss trip (and missed out on France), and wondered whether north-east England could possibly be anywhere near as interesting or enjoyable.

I needn't have been concerned. While much of the pleasure of the tour was the chance to meet and spend time with fellow bridge designers, it soon became obvious that we were to visit some splendid and fascinating bridges.

The first stop on the trip was the Middlesbrough Transporter Bridge. This is one of only six transporter bridges worldwide which remain operational (the others are in Newport, Bilbao, Rochefort, Osten, and Rendsburg). We visited it while it was closed for a major refurbishment (structural steel repairs and repainting), but were lucky enough to get a guided tour to the top of the bridge from the contractor, and of the machine house by one of the bridge's electricians.

The bridge was opened in 1911, nearly four decades after Charles Smith first proposed the concept of an "aerial ferry" bridge. Smith's idea was taken up by French engineer Ferdinand Arnodin, who designed several transporter bridges. The bridge at Middlesbrough, however, was designed by Georges Imbault, of Cleveland Bridge & Engineering Co Limited.

Unfortunately, we didn't have time to photograph the bridge from a proper distance, but most of the website links at the end of this post have plenty of photos. Seen in profile, it's a particularly fine structure. The four towers support cantilevering trusses, joined at mid-river by a hinge, and held down behind the towers by cables anchored vertically to the ground. It's the hinge that makes the bridge particularly attractive, I think. Several of the other surviving examples, particularly those designed by Arnodin, are suspension bridges with stiffening trusses, lacking the simplicity of the Middlesbrough design.

As part of the bridge's refurbishment, a lift will be installed at the south end, allowing more regular public access to the walkway level. The staircase that we climbed was steep and, on a windy day, terrifying enough for a group of hardened bridge enthusiasts, let alone the general public.

The trip to the top of the bridge, and the opportunity to quiz one of the engineers working on the refurbishment, was a great start to the study tour. Much of the repair and repainting work at high level is being undertaken from the upper transporter carriage, a high-level platform which rolls along the support girders and from which the bridge gondola is hung. This is both safe and reduces greatly the amount of temporary containment required when removing existing paintwork. However, several other parts of the bridge can be reached only with the use of roped access.

We also had a very interesting look around the bridge's machine house. As this was not in operation, most of the protective covers for the machinery and electrical equipment had been removed. What you can see in the photos is therefore quite different to what would normally be visible. It was particularly interesting to observe the difference between the original control panel, with massive fuses and electrical contacts, and the modern push-button panel.

 

 

Further information:

• Google maps / Bing maps
• Official website
• Wikipedia
• Structurae
• Engineering Timelines
• British Listed Buildings
• Bridges on the Tees
• Bridges Over the Tees: Teesside's Unusual, Unique and Historic Bridges (leaflet, ICE, undated)
• British Bridges (Johnson and Scott-Giles, Public Works, Roads and Transport Congress, 1933)
• A Celebration of Bridges between the Tweed and the Tees (Hartley and Brown, ICE, 1995)
• Civil Engineering Heritage: Northern England (Rennison, Thomas Telford Publishing, 1996)
• The Majestic Dinosaur: A History of the Middlesbrough Transporter Bridge (Phillips, Lyndhurst Publications, 2006)
• An Encyclopaedia of Britain's Bridges (McFetrich, Priory Ash, 2010)
• The Transporter: 100 Years of the Tees Transporter Bridge (Allan, Middlesbrough Council / HPM Group, 2011)

Merseyside Bridges: 10. Warrington Transporter Bridge

The last two posts were a bit of a diversion from Merseyside, not being very near the River Mersey for a start. This time, it's back to the River, although whether Warrington is part of Merseyside is perhaps a moot point.

There are plenty of bridges in Warrington, but I only had time to visit two.

The Transporter Bridge at Warrington was something of a must-see. It's one of only three surviving transporter bridges in Britain, although sadly it's by far the most neglected of the trio. It has been a presence on English Heritage's "At Risk" register for some years now, I believe.

It was originally built to service the Crosfield chemical and soap works. A railway siding to the east ended at the river bank, but wagons were transferred onto the transporter carriage and brought over the river. The rail tracks, long since disused, still run through an adjacent site. Today the site of the soap works is occupied by chemical firm Ineos Silicas, and the bridge hasn't been used since the 1960s, becoming increasingly derelict has the years have passed. Today, the bridge is maintained by Warrington Borough Council, but as it serves no practical use, it has not been well looked after.

It's also a pretty tough bridge to get to. The west abutment, within the Crosfield site, is only accessible with special permission. The east abutment involves negotiating a convoluted route through the grounds of an industrial works, or, as I did, approaching via an overgrown and somewhat forlorn pathway. The combination of lack of use and difficult access mean that any attempt to preserve the bridge for much longer may be essentially futile. I can't see how it can survive in this situation, and if it were to be relocated, that would sever the link with its historic context.

The photos make clear that this was never a pretty bridge, certainly not by comparison with its fellow transporter bridges at Newport and Middlesbrough. Its portal truss form is squat and inert, and if the latticed metalwork holds any visual attraction, it's surely only for the most committed industrial archaeologists or those besotted with the romance of dereliction.

So, it sits there and rusts. Some indication of quite how decrepit the bridge is can be gleaned from two websites with photos from unauthorised visits.

The gondola can be seen in the last photo, on the west bank, and it's still just about possible to close your eyes and imagine how it might have looked while still in active use.

Unless someone has the appetite for something radical, such as relocation, I would expect the bridge to be fenced off as dangerous within half-a-dozen years, and gone within the next decade or two.

Further information:

• Google maps / Bing maps
• Wikipedia
• Structurae
• Engineering Timelines
• Our Transport Heritage
• Friends of Warrington Transporter Bridge

Bridge competition debris part 10: Royal Victoria Dock

In 1995, the London Docklands Development Corporation held a competition to design a 200m long footbridge across the Royal Victoria Dock, connecting Silvertown on the south to the ExCel exhibition centre on the north. Central to the challenge was the need to maintain a substantial clearance to tall-masted ships, with the result that the bridge had to be at least 15m up in the air to allow for normal use. As a result, all the competition submissions are for a relatively unusual configuration of bridge.

The competition was won by Techniker and Lifschutz Davidson, with an innovative and undoubtedly spectacular 128m span "inverted Fink truss" bridge. Their design featured a 40-person transporter gondola at low level, so that pedestrians could cross the waterway without first having to use a lift or the stairs. Sadly for fans of transporter bridges, this element has never been installed, as foot traffic just doesn't justify it.

I greatly admire the attempt to rehabilitate an archaic railway bridge design (technically it's not really an inverted Fink truss as several diagonal ties are omitted - it's almost more of a variant cable-stayed bridge), and in elevation (see images below), the superstructure design is a very striking form. The supports are far less successful, especially the very monolithic enclosed stair and lift towers, and overall the scale is perhaps too much, it just towers too much above the surroundings.

The deck's extreme slenderness is also only maintained at the cost of somewhat unsightly bulges above walkway level, apparent on the photograph (above right), which also shows the use of external cables near the parapets for, err, unauthorised maintenance access.

Of the other competition entries, I find the Robert Benaim one somewhat baffling as it is not at height and is unclear how ships are allowed for - perhaps it's from an unrelated competition! The curved tie to which most of the stays are attached looks pretty but structurally all it adds is a huge problem if cables ever need to be replaced.

The Cezary Bednarski design seems the most successful at resolving the difficult end towers, something the Price & Myers proposal does very poorly. I like the Richard Horden submission, especially how it begs the question of whether an opening span would be a much better approach for a waterway which I imagine only rarely accommodates high-masted vessels.

I've tried to find images of the unsuccessful entries on the internet, but so far only found four. I don't know if there were more. If anyone can point out others to me, I'll update this post in the future.

As ever, links are only given if there's more information on a design on a firm's website. Click the images for a full-size version.

Winner

Techniker / Lifschutz Davidson

All three images courtesy of Liline Sur Flickr

Other competitors

Cezari Bednarski / Dewhurst Macfarlane

Richard Horden Associates

Powell Williams / Robert Benaim

Price & Myers / Eva Jiricna

Ian Ritchie / Arup

Updated 14 Feb 2011: Added image of Ian Ritchie / Arup entry.

Bridges news roundup

First footbridge to be built by 90-year old

I don't mean the first by any nonagenarian, just one in particular, architect Paolo Soleri, who is perhaps best known for his utopian eco-village Arcosanti. Hopefully the finished bridge will look better than in the only visualisation I could find (click for full-size version).

Bridge design fees hit new record

If only. But a fee of US$3.3m to design a footbridge (or possibly two - the story isn't clear) seems somewhat on the generous side. This is the latest story in the always entertaining Calgary & Calatrava saga, which also features this amusing quote from the city's transport team, attempting to justify their recommendation not to put the design contract out to normal competition:

"Over the past two decades Calatrava's designs have revolutionized bridge construction from dull, mechanical instruments into elegant objects"

I'll bet all the many other talented designers around the world who've been active over the same period love being treated as mere footnotes in bridge design history.

Wobbles in Wrexham

The image (click for full version) shows the bridge in question (taken from Tekla website). Council spokeswoman: "The bridge is, by design, a suspension bridge and will therefore inevitably be subject to a certain degree of movement." Well, it's technically cable-stayed rather than suspension, but never mind.

What seems odd about it on first viewing is that the mast, which is hinged at its base, is inclined towards the deck, where on many similar curved footbridges it inclines away (e.g. South Quay). The mast is shown as tied down towards the deck, when you'd expect a stay cable in the exact opposite direction. The local news story also makes what seems an entirely spurious connection to the notorious Millennium Bridge.

It's not entirely clear why this is news now, as the bridge would seem to have been wobbling ever since it opened two months ago.

Transporter bridge to reopen

Newport Transporter Bridge is one of only three surviving transporter bridges in the UK and one of only eight worldwide. It has been closed since August 2008 but the local council has agreed to find the money to repair and reopen it.

It's quite criminal that these irreplaceable historic structures are allowed to fall out of use (and beyond that into ruin), with at present the Middlesborough bridge being the only one working in the UK (Warrington's bridge has been disused for nearly 50 years and is likely to be lost as it serves no useful purpose at its original site). (Image courtesy of James Stringer).