Some Favourite Motorway Bridges or how to be a nerd

This post is really for Ferret, who is making quilts that depict bridges.

One of my favourite bridges on the M25 is between junction 12 and 13. I was already vaguely aware it was of interest to civil engineers, but here is the results of tonight's surfing.

This picture was already uploaded to blogger (not by me), but has almost certainly been swiped from the Motorway Archive pages of the Institution of Highways & Transportation website.

The Lyne Railway Bridge was the first concrete cable-stayed bridge in Great Britain, and the first cable stayed railway bridge in Western Europe. The resident engineer was Stephen Brame.

More information about it can be found at ICE website and here with a mention here.

If you'd like more information about cable-stayed bridges, you might still be able to get a place on this course at the Wessex Institute of Technology, a snip at €1200, including lunch and coffee. If that is a bit too expensive, you could buy this book from the American Society of Civil Engineers, a mere $137. On the other hand the Bridge Pros and the Bridges Project sites probably tell you all you need to know for free.