BUILDING SYDNEY BRIDGE interesting film .

[Captain Kong]

No sign of Elf and Safety on that job.
I believe there was about 16 men killed in the construction.
It was like when I was Steel Erecting in 1961 to 63.. No HaS, On one Job contructing the Motorway bridge across the Ship Canal the beam slipped and came down and into the Canal. and killed 11 men. I was on the other beam on the far side so lucky, I was later injured on another site and recieved five broken ribs.
Apart from all that not a bad job.
Cheers
Brian.

[John Arton]

There used to be an excellent documentary a number of years ago about the building of the 2nd Severn Bridge and the way that the concrete road sections were put into place with the glue used to join them having to be applied by hand. The crane used to put each section in placed basically walked its way across moving along as it put each new section in place in front of itself. They started construction from both sides and when they met in the middle they were only millimetres out. After completing the road bed huge steel cables were passed through them and then tightened up to make it possible for the road way to support the traffic load, but remember next time you drive across it its held together by glue applied by6 hand.
rgds
JA

[Gulliver]

[QUOTE=Captain Kong;143024]No sign of Elf and Safety on that job.
I believe there was about 16 men killed in the construction.
It was like when I was Steel Erecting in 1961 to 63.. No HaS, On one Job contructing the Motorway bridge across the Ship Canal the beam slipped and came down and into the Canal. and killed 11 men. I was on the other beam on the far side so lucky, I was later injured on another site and recieved five broken ribs.
Apart from all that not a bad job.Cheers
Brian.[/QUOTE]




Ah,Barton H.L. Bridge.I remember my Dad driving the family from Worsley to Stretford over the bridge one night for a treat just after it's opening in 1960.The view over that part of Manchester spread out below with twinkling orange and white lights from the summit of Barton High Level motorway bridge was truly memorable and remains with me to to this day,as did our shrieks of joy and not a little fear as Dad struggled to correct the heading of our little Morris Minor(Series 2 with split-screen) in the high crosswinds on the Bridge-we returned via the normal road,as Mum's nerves wouldn't allow it twice!
My Dad regaled us with the tale of how some men were killed building it,and we kids were suitably quiet and reverent,lost in our own thoughts of plunging into the Canal atop a girder or two.

Tragic.I just googled the two seperate construction accidents,both of them in 1959.

Barton Bridge disaster February 1959
Whilst erecting 4 x, 200 ton steel girders, 80ft
above the ground, the supporting scaffolding
collapsed bringing down the girders and killing 4
men.
60 men, that would normally have been on the
girders, were lining up for their pay at the time.
21 children were left fatherless.
　
Evidence given at the Inquest:
Scaffolding not installed in accordance with the
design drawings
The design drawing was not a working drawing
and only gave an indication of the structure
Worn and corroded scaffold tubes had been
Used
Lack of lateral bracing
Design carried out by an ‘estimator
draughtsman’. Not ‘passed’ by an
engineer
Bulging of the scaffold noted but not acted
upon.

　
　
Tragedy struck again on Weds 30^th December 1959

Scaffold supporting 4 steel girders, 250ft
long failed, killing 2 workers and injuring 8
Others
The Coroner concluded that
“….the general picture was one of men
fumbling about not knowing where
anything was, or where to get anything
…”
　


50 years on it's nice to reflect how many lives have been saved by H & S measures since...

Gulliver

[Colin Hawken]

When are they going to pay the British firm that built it for them???? (Only in fun mates.)

[John Arton]

When going up to Carrington it always used to amaze me the amount of traffic on the M6 bridge (now doubled up), irrespective of the time of day and through the night. Most of it seemed to be trucks delivering to ASDA, TESCO, MORRISONS etc.
Those Manchester lot must need a lot of feeding!
rgds
JA

[happy daze john in oz]

Then in the 70's we built the West Gate bridge in Melbourne, but bad construction policy and ignoring advice from overseas it collapsed and a large number of men were killed. It was eventualy finished and now underneath is a garden and comemorative items to remember the men that died.

[j.sabourn]

Sydney Bridge... From a newspaper cut out I have date unknown, " First of its kind, The wrought Iron Bridge built over the Tyne in 1876, was the first arch-rib designed bridge in the world built to support a suspended railway track. It was the forerunner of Newcastles Tyne Bridge and Sydneys Harbour Bridge in Australia. "This is referring to Wylams Point Bridge on the Tyne. Is now a monument and public footpath sometimes walked with veneration. There is a couple of pages on this forerunner, I only have the one page. Cheers John Sabourn

[happy daze john in oz]

Sydney Bridge... From a newspaper cut out I have date unknown, " First of its kind, The wrought Iron Bridge built over the Tyne in 1876, was the first arch-rib designed bridge in the world built to support a suspended railway track. It was the forerunner of Newcastles Tyne Bridge and Sydneys Harbour Bridge in Australia. "This is referring to Wylams Point Bridge on the Tyne. Is now a monument and public footpath sometimes walked with veneration. There is a couple of pages on this forerunner, I only have the one page. Cheers John Sabourn

Correct John, the Sydney Harbour bridge was a copy of the Newcastle one on a bigger scale.

[j.sabourn]

And the Tyne Bridge was a follow on from the Wylam Bridge. The UK has had a brilliant engineering past. Not so much there for the future as all the trades given away. John Sabourn

[Ivan Cloherty]

We are still designing bridges and roads for the USA and sending the designers project engineers, not forgetting the bridge over the Bosphorus (copy of the Humber bridge) as well as airports in China and Japan (where Dorman Long supplied some specially curved steel girders etc) and then the highest bridge above ground level (1000 feet), the Millau bridge in France designed by Sir Norman Foster with British project engineers. There are numerous other projects which have required (and still require) our initial input, trouble is the general public is not made aware of them, only reading specialist papers like Construction News keeps you abreast of what's going on. We are not quite dead in the water yet.