#ThrowBackThursday
Today marks 50 years since the Queen opened the Forth Road Bridge. I’m pleased to say that I’m far too young to remember that day. What I do remember, though, is being taken over the bridge as as a young child, not because we needed to get to the other side but just as a fun thing to do! We drove over and then headed back into Edinburgh again. Of course there was a toll to pay in those days too. Don’t tell anybody this, but as a child I thought it was called the ‘fourth’ road bridge!
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| © Copyright Anthony Foster |
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| © Copyright Andrew Smith |
In practical terms though it was, and still is, a major advantage. The journey from South Queensferry to North Queensferry now takes just a few minutes. Before the bridge was built you would need to take a ferry or face a time-consuming drive to cross farther up the estuary at the Kincardine Bridge.
The Scottish Screen Archive has some fascinating films featuring the Forth Road Bridge. Here is a film showing cars queuing for the ferry not long after the bridge was opened (you can see the new bridge in the background).
The bridge was built high above the Firth to allow great industrial ships to pass underneath. The bridge is 2,512 metres in length, around 1.5 miles. At the time it was built it had the longest span for a suspension bridge outside the USA; it is easy to understand why it was such an attraction!
This film from 1968 looks at the ‘development of sources of power, the industries, and new towns along the borders of the River Forth’.
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