The Forth Bridge. Many adjectives apply, including ‘spectacular’ (Jim Barton/geograph)
If I was asked to describe the Forth Bridge in just one word I’d have a problem with which one I’d ultimately choose.
Spectacular?
Iconic?
Eye-catching?
Beautiful?
The list goes on and on. It is, as bridges go, one of the most recognisable bridges in the world with, for me, it’s greatest appeal being that it is not only a great feat of engineering, it looks like one as well. It wasn’t a rushed job either. The bridge took eight years to build, is 8,094 feet long and, for a time, it had the longest single cantilever bridge span in the world.
The not-so soft underbelly of the Forth Bridge (MJ Richardson/geograph)
It’s also, of course, the focus of a familiar and well worn saying, one that is inevitably dragged out whenever someone mentions a never ending task of one kind or another, adding that, “…it’s like painting the Forth Bridge” (ie) an infinite job with, as legend has it, one that takes so long that, once its entire length has been covered by a nice new coat of glass flake epoxy (you don’t slap everyday emulsion on this sort of structure) paint, the decorators have then got to go back to the beginning and start all over again.
There was an element of truth in that phrase or was, that is, up until 2011 when Network Rail, who own the bridge, claimed the world’s longest ever paint job was finally finished and that the bridge would need painting again for 25 years. It’s a structure made for superlatives.
But figure this out. If the concept, construction and day to day management of the bridge is one thing, then how about that of the matching tunnel which ran under, rather than over the River Forth?
The subterranean Forth crossing was opened in 1964 at a depth of over 1500 feet below sea level when, after what must have been one of the toughest, arduous and potentially dangerous engineering achievements ever made in modern Scotland, coal miners from the Kinneil Colliery, built on the south side of the river met up with their peers from the Valleyfield Colliery in Fife.
A carriage from the long gone Kinneil Colliery (Kim Traynor/geograph)
Their meeting up, in conditions that would have been pitch black, claustrophobic beyond belief (certainly to the likes of you and me) and uncomfortably humid mean that, for the first time in history and certainly before the world famous bridge way, way above their heads was opened, it was now possible to walk directly from the Lothians to Fife without getting your feet wet or needing to take a boat.
Astonishing stuff. So why do so few people know about it? Well for a start, it was never intended to be built and left for pedestrians to make their way under the river from one side to the other. It didn’t need to be bright, airy, spacious and comfortable. It merely had to serve a purpose which was, at the time, purely an economic one-in this case, allowing for the coal that was dug from the rich seams in the Lothians to be easily dispatched southwards for processing in Fife, rather than at the old fashioned and somewhat decrepit facility that was already in existence at Valleyfield.
The tunnel also had the additional ‘perk’ of increasing the working lives of a further three coalfields as whatever was mined there could also be transported through the tunnel. Sadly, no visible evidence of the tunnel remains. Both Kinneil and Valleyfield Colliery’s have long been demolished as has, of course, the entire industry of which they both played an important and noble part.
A memorial at the site of the former Valleyfield Colliery. Thirty five men were killed as the result of an explosion in October 1939. No job has ever been as hellish as that of a coal miner (Euan Nelson/geograph)
As for actual documentary evidence of the tunnel, it now only exists on a few maps and plans as well as a few photographs. So anyone seeking the thrill of descending into the bowels of the earth here for an underground challenge like no other will be disappointed, primarily because the mine shafts leading to the tunnel have been backfilled for eternity with hardcore before being capped in concrete. Even the iron props used to maintain the tunnels structure will have buckled under the tremendous load they have had to bear whilst, in other parts of the tunnel, floor to roof levels will have been flooded with groundwater.
The site is, to all extents and purposes, lost forever.
It was planned at a time when the world had no shortage of visionaries and excavated by men who were as strong and unyielding as the rock they had to hack and hew their way through. A once forbidding place where you could have walked to Fife and back underneath the sea…
…which is a fact as startling to believe as the Forth Bridge is to behold.