Talk:Severn Railway Bridge

[[Category: good articles|Severn Railway Bridge]]

Re-use?

The newsreel in the external links section mentions that it was hoped to sell some of the spans for re-use. Does anyone know if this actually happened and, if so, where? --Cavrdg 07:41, 10 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Ron Huxley's book says (chapter 7, p126/7):- 'British Rail had, in the meantime,discovered the possibility of disposal of the bridge spans as building units...' (Never did quite understand how!) Linuxlad 09:30, 10 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Thanks for the reply. I have found a page that says The bridge's iron girders were - believe it or not - sold to Chile where they are used today on a viaduct carrying a road! No more details, though, and probably not sufficiently authoritative to include in the main entry. --Cavrdg 20:30, 11 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Just checked with a friend of mine in Sharpness (Ron H having died 10 or more years back now) - he says, some weren't re-usable, some were sold for scrap and some went to South America, but he's not sure where. So it seems like the Chile story may have validity.Linuxlad 20:54, 11 Jun 2005 (UTC)

The White Elephant

Is this the right name to appear in the infobox? It doesn't appear anywhere in the text and isn't cited. --Old Moonraker (talk) 17:18, 21 August 2009 (UTC)

Fixed. Thanks, User:Mattbuck. --Old Moonraker (talk) 19:27, 21 August 2009 (UTC)

Few other points

• Purpose of the bridge. It was intended to carry coal from the FoD collieries. Was it ever intended to carry the (much larger) Welsh coal traffic? To replace the Bristol and South Wales Union Railway as the passenger route between Bristol and Cardiff?
• The gas main
• The boxing match on the night of the accident
• More on building details and costs. Hamilton’s Windsor supplied the ironwork, which was about 2/3rd of the cost, but there was another third on masonry, earthworks etc. that was first supplied by Vickers & Cooke, later replaced Griffith Griffiths.

Andy Dingley (talk) 10:00, 8 September 2016 (UTC)

Are these rhetorical questions or questions for me? I don't know answers to most of them and the information I have comes almost entirely from the Huxley book. Feel free to further develop the article if you wish. Cwmhiraeth (talk) 12:27, 8 September 2016 (UTC)

P.S. I think it was a rather successful bridge. Built in a very difficult location, it fulfilled its function for eighty years, and its downfall came about as a result of impact by much larger vessels than were probably anticipated when it was designed. Cwmhiraeth (talk) 12:31, 8 September 2016 (UTC)