Celebrating the landmark Menai Suspension Bridge on its 200th anniversary

You're listening to the Engineers Collective, the podcast by New Civil Engineer. New Civil Engineer is the leading publication covering the Civil Engineering sector, a trusted and authoritative voice for over 50 years. The Engineers Collective comes to you with monthly news analysis from our editorial team and in-depth interviews with industry experts and thought leaders. If you're a private sector organisation looking to reach tens of thousands of listeners, you can find out more about sponsoring an episode of the podcast by visiting newcivilengineer.com/podcast. Hello and welcome back to the Engineers Collective from New Civil Engineer. I'm your host and see you near Zeta to roll back in here. It's been a while, we had Christmas and then we had some scheduling, errors but we're back. We've got a good episode coming up with the ICE Family William Day, who's also on the panel for Historic Engineering to discuss the Men Eye Suspension Bridge, which celebrates its 200th anniversary of opening on the 30th January, which is also my birthday. But I'm considerably younger than the Men Eye Suspension Bridge, which is nice to say. But before we get to that, I'm joined by our senior reporter Tom Johnson, how you doing, TJ? It should be known that while we're recording this tomorrow is the 30th of January, so I'm happy to be up for it tomorrow. Thank you. Hopefully this, yeah, the 30th of January is the Men Eye Suspension Bridge anniversary and my anniversary. Yeah, happy birthday to the Men Eye Suspension Bridge. Sadly, it has been announced that the works will not be finished in time for as quite centennial, but you know, it takes a long time to keep up, keep something 200 years old and we'll talk about more with that with William later. But before that, TJ, we're going to discuss some recent happenings in the world that's a engineering. Starting with some major rail announcements, I'm sure everyone who is interested in rail has seen that Northern Powerhouse Rail has been announced or re-announced or resurrected, however you want to put it. So this Labour Government has been promising to resurrect NPR, which was a Tory promise over 10 years ago now to build a new high speed railway across the North connecting all the cities. Some people call it high speed 3. The version that we've got now is not quite that, it's kind of just like an amalgamation of different things, but it is a £45 billion plan that promises to improve rail services across the North of England. So I guess we could call it Northern Powerhouse Railway, whereas I wrote about the Liverpool to manage us to railway, and that was the focus of a lot of the pre-annual building up to this with the Government saying that they were going to repurpose they just too face to be built to enable that part to be built. The first phase that's going to happen under the new NPR is actually, on the other side of the penines, it's between Bradford and Sheffield with a new Bradford station being one of the first major things to happen, which is good, because it seemed like that wasn't going to happen under the previous government. Yeah, it's an interesting plan that we've talked forward, I think, and it's very promising and, as you know, our report is shown, the civil engineering and transport infrastructure industry is actually really pleased and says the same thing, it's very promising. So, you know, I think it's a move in the right direction, but as a lot of people told us, you know, with big rail projects like this, the UK hasn't necessarily been at the front, you know, been a world leader and building them well, building them quickly as they just have shown us. So, you know, a lot of people that have come out to be, but NPR have said about how it's really important, everything that's gone wrong with HS2 needs to be done right this time around and we need to prove that, you know, we are capable of building these big rail projects that do massively improve connectivity for places which, you know, it's not up to modern standards and when you compare our rail network, you know, compared to other places in the world, other countries, you know, it is quite obvious that there is a lack of connectivity to a lot of places outside the south of England and a lot of other, the other big cities apart from London. So, you know, I think this is a good opportunity to improve on that and kind of put us back on the map in terms of, you know, country-wide connectivity, especially amongst the big cities. So, it's just, you know, it's important that we, you know, it gets the funding and it gets the attention that it needs to be delivered in the way that HS2 should have been delivered really. Yeah, I mean HS2 and the failures around that or the perceived failures around that in terms of budgeting, looms large over the NPR announcement. I mean, the government, the Treasury, they announced the 45 billion funding cap but they hedged it with, you know, this is a fair funding envelope and it's going to make sure we don't do the same thing as we did with HS2, what we, the previous government did with HS2 and, as you said, commentators who said the same thing, lessons have to be learned from HS2. But, at the moment, it's still kind of a very skeletal plan. We don't really have timelines for it. I believe it's not a detailed route. No, they've got this kind of very sketchy, because to start with a lot of it is just upgrades between Bradford and Leeds. The Liverpool to Manchester would require new infrastructure but that's not until the second phase, which probably won't come until late 2030s. I don't know. We don't know. We're still a bit in the dark about that. And then the final phase is connecting across the Pennines. And whether that will be, I mean, a lot of that is being done, whether Trans-Canine route upgrade already, whether they will also be new infrastructure. And the Leedside line up in Newcastle in the north, east is also part of it somehow, which seems like a little bit of a stretch, but sure. They've probably just rolled a lot of time with plans into the old big idea of MPR, which you know, I guess the name in itself is meant to cover a lot of the north of the UK. Well, the loads got them, obviously. So I totally get why they try and put a couple of this money into the wider MPR plan, but it does seem, some of the Leedside line and other ones do seem a bit tangential to what MPR was originally meant to achieve. Yeah. And you can see why a hole, which is kind of stuck on out on the east coast, their accounts are always not very happy about being left out. And they've had, they've demanded urgent meetings to get themselves some money, some of this money. So we'll see how that turns out. Also part of the plan was kind of a hearted commitment to a new Birmingham to Manchester railway, which would replace the cancelled part of HS2, but that's not going to happen until after the MPR was completed, probably in the 2040s, which has caused some consternation because arguably the northern powerhouse rail doesn't necessarily make sense, doesn't bring the benefits without that other connection from Birmingham to Manchester. So, even Lord Handy, I did some reports when he was speaking about it in Parliament last week, he admitted that there's part of it, at least the first half of it from the West Midlands to crew might be necessary before northern powerhouse rail because it would help relieve a bottleneck on the West Coast main line. So some questions still to answer there. It does seem up a bit of a case of building backwards to meet in the middle, in both sides of the country and trying to build inwards rather than building art or building down, which you know a lot of people argue HS2 should have been built that way around anyway, if it was generally meant to benefit other parts of the country off London. So it does still beg the question as to, you know, is all this money, no favoring the south of the UK? I guess, you know, if the intention is there, you know, no matter how long it takes, if you know, if the intention is there then, you know, hopefully at some point, maybe not even an hour last time, but we will have a fully connected up Icebead round at work or modern round at work. So, you know, I don't think, you know, I understand that there are complaints about the way it's been built and there is fears that it might actually cause more issues in West Midlands, and you know, especially trains going up the country. But I mean, I think that genuinely, this government has been a lot more promising in terms of, you know, trying to join everything up and also create a real, you know, connected map of the whole of the UK way. rails concerned. Whereas, you know, I feel like the previous government was very much just intent on getting phase one of Ageless to done and dusted and they couldn't even really achieve that or commenting close to achieving that. So yeah, I think all the talk is there. I guess, you know, it's now down to the, you know, getting everything, you know, space in the ground and getting everything designed and ready to go really. Yeah. And a big part of that is the railways bill, which is currently working its way through Parliament, which would stipulate that the transport sector fee has to have a long-term rail plan in place, which would last 25 years or look ahead 25 years, so beyond one parliament, way beyond one parliament, which means that another government could come in and change it. But anyway, that bill is going to establish the long-fabled Great British railways as well. And they're currently in the committee stage and hashing out some of the details. You wrote this week about how they voted down a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a dendum that would have made it a rolling program of electrification essential for mandatory, which is something that everyone in the industry thinks is necessary because everyone agrees that electrification is the way forward. It's not only at a more green railway, but it's a more reliable railway. And we've had boom and bust of, of delivering electrification in the UK since the 80s and, uh, yeah, it's been, uh, it's been a bit of a struggle for both the deity and network rail and it's been very slow choreographs. I do, I guess, you know, situation from there, perspective is that it's very hard because a lot of our railway lines would build so long ago that they don't have to, especially the gauge that is needed for over its line equipment. And, um, also, obviously a lot of our bridges overpasses of the railway aren't the right height to be able to wire the cables underneath that are needed for electrification. So there is a lot of delivery challenges, but, you know, as, you know, even, even MPs have been bringing this up in Parliament during the readings of the bill and, you know, the sittings, to do the railway to build, is that other places in Europe managed to do it with even, you know, with harder to reign to build electrification equipment and make their lines electrified. So it is kind of, you know, now people are beginning to question whether the amount of delays and slow pace that the electrification program is taking, especially as we know getting closer and closer to net zero, closer and closer to sort of, you know, legal limits as to when, especially public companies need to be almost fully decarbonized. There is a lot of questions being asked now is if these excuses are legitimate in the face of other places that have managed to completely electrify their railways or nearly completely electrify their railways. But I do think the government, another point the government made which is fair is that electrification is not the only way to completely decarbonize the network. So, and you know, they're looking into battery trains and power by batteries for these particular areas which are hard to electrify. So I do understand that sort of, you know, push back as to why a rolling electrification program wouldn't necessarily be the greatest idea right now. But at the same time, I think over the next few years, if the pace of electrification doesn't increase, then, you know, at the end of the day it's going to come back and it's going to be, it's going to look more like they're, they wanted to not do the rolling electrification program because they wanted to share the responsibility to have to electrify a certain amount of railway each year. So I guess, you know, over the next few years, we will very much learn whether it's the case of them, you know, wanting to put the resources into electrifying the railway or not, based not upon a mandatory, you know, responsibility or because of whether they, you know, legitimately want to decarbonize the rail now or not. Yeah, I mean, the only major electrification program currently underway is the Transparenine rate upgrade. The Midland mainline is being electrified, but that's being curtailed. It's paused sort of where it was, yeah, where it was supposed to go. As you say, battery electric is what they say they're investigating, it's what East West Rail is going to be, but that's not always going to be the answer. And as you say, we've got a lot of infrastructure that makes it difficult to electrify, but if we had a rolling program of electrification, we build up the expertise, the workforce, bring down the costs and make it a much more efficient operation to do those kinds of things. So it does seem like the DFT is trying to show that responsibility of having a target to reach, as you say, which is a real shame and we've spoken to, but this is one of my hobby courses. I did a feature about it in 2024, which has lots more experienced people than me talking about it. But maybe one of the reasons why they don't want to do is because their budget constraints, which is something else you've been writing about. Yeah, which does link into the railways bill as well, which I guess kind of tangentially, and hypothetically links to the railways bill, but this stems from a story where I've last year around the NIST as annual report revealed that across infrastructure there was a 3.2 billion on underspend against budgets. And now it's coming out that there's discrepancies between DFT's budgets, between the spending review and the autumn budget, which I reported earlier this week, which they blamed on accounting changes and then refused to respond, you know, ignore all of my requests for a slightly more detailed explanation of what accounting changes actually means, because it's kind of a very vague, non-descript way of trying to explain 2.4 billion pounds going missing without, you know, they're actually directly referring to it at all. I think they kind of probably either had some, I feel like the accounting change, what I should have really said was accounting was stayed, and that would have explained it a bit better. Yeah, and I mean, as you say, the spending review was in July of last year, and then by the time of the autumn budget where they reached, they else, they reset the, what, they didn't reset them, but they restated the budgets for each department over the next five years. The DFT suddenly had 2.4 billion pounds less, okay, I elotted to, over the next, up to 2029, yeah, which is, and yeah, as you say, it's mysterious accounting changes. What does that even mean? But yeah, I think what's even more mysterious, it's the fact that they just would not respond to any of my requests, which, you know, at this point, I've probably gone up to, you know, six to seven emails that I'd sent them, I called them twice, they said they were looking into it, you know, they knew very well that I wanted to write this story, you know, they knew very well that I was intrigued as to what it all meant, but they still didn't respond to it, and then added to that, it was, you know, the question was brought up in Parliament, and two different occasions, they were both responded to by two different people, that in the written response, which included the same table of planned budgets for the period, but were headline under different amounts. One was what capital C del, which is capital delivery expenditure limits, and then the other one was resource delivery expenditure limits. Even though it was exactly the same amount. Well, the tables were slightly different, but the wording was exactly the same, which is one word changed, even though they were supposedly written by different DFT undersecretaries, they were word for word the same, except one resource change to capital. So, and neither of them gave an answer as to what where that 2.4 billion had gone. So, none of the numbers that were in these two tables added up to take what the numbers that were explained in the autumn, or in the autumn budget, but all the spending review. So, at the end of the day, again, accounting changes have caused, you know, money to be either added or locks, and nobody knows, because it's not there. How much budget the DFT or the Treasury is willing to give to transport has just not been explained at all. Yeah, it's just all up in the air. I feel like if you asked someone in finance working for the DFT, how much money they're planning to get, they probably wouldn't have been there. Yeah, very strange. Well, hopefully something will come out about that, but probably not a little bit. Yeah, I didn't even explain it's tangential link to the Railways bill, but I said actually, questions have also been asked about our clause in the Railways bill, which will allow the transfer secretary over it is to the time to completely withdraw any funding from government to the DOT or to transport a transport body without any consultation which you know does you know start to raise concerns that you know if people are questioning where this money is going i.e. last year 3.2 billion pounds of under spent budgets on infrastructure you know if people start to question this the transport secretary can just say oh you know we withdrew that funding without any consultation and it's not even been made aware whether they have to let anyone know what their that funding is being withdrawn so it's you know it's kind of building a picture that the government are saying oh we're going to give all this money to ets for you know infrastructure for regional connectivity blah blah blah at the end of the day maybe it is just talk and that funding might not be there when it comes down to it yeah it remains to be seen I guess it's an ever-evolved and picture and yeah I guess has praised British railways established gets established as the railways bill goes through they'll be a lot more scrutiny and hopefully we'll find out but there you go a mixed picture for rail at the start of the year I guess the headline grabbing northern powerhouse rail announcement is good but us NCE people going into the details of the funding and the actual dates and timelines for all of the things that they were now it's being lacking leaves us scratching our chins very cynical go whether they're actually going to deliver what they say they will yeah especially because the one they got three and a half years left of this parliament and who knows if they'll get another one anyway thank you TJ for joining me for that chat and yes as I said something completely different now if you bought a rail hopefully you'll stick around for this history lesson about the Men I Suspension Bridge as it celebrates it's 200 year anniversary that's coming up after this you're listening to the engineers collective the podcast by new civil engineer new civil engineer is the leading publication covering the civil engineering sector a trusted and authoritative voice for over 50 years the engineers collective comes to you with monthly news analysis from our editorial team and in-depth interviews with industry experts and thought leaders if you're a private sector organization looking to reach tens of thousands of listeners you can find out more about sponsoring an episode of the podcast by visiting new civil engineer dot com forward slash podcast and welcome back to the engineers collective from new civil engineer and I'm now joined by I see fellow William Day who's also on the panel for historic engineering how are you doing William I'm very well thank you so we're here today to talk about the Men I Suspension Bridge which celebrates it's 200th anniversary this week actually has record on we I have the same birthday as the Men I Suspension Bridge actually but I'm quite a bit younger than and it so it's the 30th of January but why don't you tell me about your connection to the bridge my connection goes back now what over 25 years I first came up to North Wales to look at the issues to concern with replacing the original deck you're putting a lightweight concrete deck on to replace the old one in that to reduce the loading on the deck and allow higher loads traffic loads the work was quite complex because we needed to balance out the way we did it on the whole bridge such as now I've continued working on the bridge for a number of years before I retired and repainted it in 2005 nice I'd love to hear more about those works as we come to it but let's let's go back to the beginning of the Men I bridge and for those people who might not be familiar with it where where is it what do they need to know about it basic facts right well the Men I Suspension Bridge spans between across Men I straight between Canalvinshire or Was Canalvinshire and Anglesey now Guinness and Anglesey the purpose of bridge was primarily to complete the link from London to Hollyhead so the final link in the Hollyhead Road interesting and this was in the 19th century obviously with 200 years ago and it was designed by Thomas Telford what would people know is this is most famous work or what would other people what else would people know him for well if you look at almost any direction in the United Kingdom you will come across Thomas Telford's work you also built the Gaza Canal in Sweden the Canal across the the locks in in Scotland and Pongosati of course which is also paying us for what was that last one what is it it's the aqueduct so well the highest aqueducts in Europe and it also one of the longest where is that that's in Triangosland okay also in Wales then indeed so considering this was built in 1826 or it was completed and then to 1826 how long did it take to build well the foundation stone was actually laid in 1819 so took a total of just sure seven years complete and involved quite a lot of very complex engineering and engineering developments yeah so I suppose we should describe the dimensions of the bridge the height and the length and all these elements right but the overall length of the bridge is over over 500 meters the main stand a suspended stand is 176 meters between saddles which was at the time as the longest stand in the world it remained as long as stand or some some years that right happens in the 18th versus but in the 18th versus so it isn't quite important bridge the other aspects of the bridge of course is it's a hundred feet above the Mellai Street and that was a requirement set by the Admiralty so that they could sail ships underneath tell us the first proposal was for an arch if you think about an arch you can't really sail the ship underneath it in any position so that drove into order suspension bridge and and hence the the overall dimensions now and arch would have been quite an engineering feat back then but even as it is as a suspension bridge it's quite quite a feat for the time I mean were suspension bridges common at that time no not really the think about Mellai suspension bridge it's a level dex suspension bridge was first level dex suspension bridge was built in America in 1801 by James Simley and had a span of only 70 feet so it was a fairly major development the other events of the time Samuel Brown built the Union Chamber which was a hundred meters which was complete in 1820 but there was also another bridge in North Melbourne part of which still survives which is a chain bridge near Saint Gosselon so these were built by various people but not very success or very few of them survived to this day because the Union Chamber of course does and the change of chain bridge it's playing out of course so survived but not rest of the bridge why was it decided that a suspension bridge would be the best way to cross the Mellai straight right it has several advantages obviously the one option of course is level dex issue actually actually look at a suspension bridge it's a way of supporting a load by hanging it from a chain now the machinery worked quite efficiently as a load bearing element and so that is what this has given suspension bridges to become the longest span bridges in the world still are you look at Humber for example that's a shim be good example quite a few others China all around the world now the longest spans are always suspension bridges but back then was there pushback or do you know if Telfer's design was thought to be daring or did they all just go along with it I was thought to be daring in fact the work people who challenged the concept and but worried about it so it was tough himself. He had concerns about the suspension bridge, but proceeding with it, when it was completed, David Boyle was opened and pronounced to William Probe, his engineer on site. He felt everything was satisfactory, so they should proceed the opening. But not necessarily concerns. And even during construction, there was damage caused by the wind. I'm not surprised. It must be pretty windy out of the world. So who actually constructed it? Where did they find it? I suppose were there construction companies that were stature enough to build it then? There's a mixture actually, because Wilson was appointed to build the Masonry. If you look at the bridge now, you can see that it's more Masonry than Suspended's Fad. The sides are quite massive and very impressive structures rising up by 100 feet, certain issues above the straight. So he'd bought that. Telfer actually had a contact with William Hazelding, which he'd known for many years, and worked on Kassati within, and he'd actually had a very good relationship. And Hazelding was a teller, a man who sought very carefully about what he was doing, and also developed many schemes. He'd think about his Kassati, for example, it is quite a dramatic break from what proceeded, and quite a breakthrough structure, but it has survived. Again, it survived over 200 years. Yeah, and I want to talk about how it survived, but I suppose to get to that, we should discuss more about how it was constructed. What were the materials originally? What was the, do you know what the order it was constructed in? Right. Well, the nation's completion first, and I will see the towers, which were referred to as pyramids, actually, in a provisional account. And then they supported the back spans on temporary works, and put those changes in place. And then the chains were assembled onto a raft, which was loaded out, with a section of chain hung from the, shall we, Kanabansrish Tower down to the right state of the tide. The raft would be brought into position. The chains linked together and then roped, brought down from the angusy side, connected to the ends of the chain, which were then winched up using capstones. No machines, unfortunately, they were behind capstones, which were then worked by 50 men, but quite a dramatic and impressive exercising itself. This then listed to chain clear, and they made the final connection, once they got that in place. I mean, got the chain in place, of course. They should then progress the course, across, put the hangers in place, and then assemble the deck below that. More or less the way we still do it today. That may be probably a bit more safety today. Well, you say about safety, and there were deaths, but only three, and Telford, for those three deaths, now, not to incorrect working, but more down towards indibration. That really. If you look back at angusarcy, angusarcy was undertaken by Telford and Jessup, but there was a very strong concern for safety of the workforce. So, yeah, safety was really matching the forefront of the way they did things. Interesting. So, was there a lot of inebriation on site then? I wasn't there. Obviously, it was occasional, an ideation. After they reached the chains up, and the guys were working the catch, and they were doing a barrel of beer. Oh, well. Yes, there was some drinking, but I don't think it was particularly tolerating on site. No, people would be drunk. Out of interest, how is all of this known? Who was keeping records? Well, there's a very complete record kept by the resin engine we improvised. And it's quite detailed. There were also one or two anecdotal discounts as well. Because it was such an important bridge and sort of breaks through, a lot of attention was given to the bridge and recording it was happened. And is there an estimate of how many people were actually involved in the construction? Yes, absolutely. It's something I've never actually looked up though. If you look at the workforce, then it would have been divided up into the masons working on the approach by that. And they were following one group. There were also the other group which were working on the metalwork. And they would be split into two. So there would be people working up to the magna, manufacturing the links and the components. And then those on site assembling them. The manufacture was so true at some time and they've assembly with rocky raccoons digging in 1825 and being completed in the spring of 4th, early 1st month of 1826. So basically you had these three groups of people. Interesting. You mentioned how the wind caused some damage. What kind of damage did it do? Well it's basically what happened was that the deck was caused to flutter. Do you imagine a sheet of paper and the deck at that time was actually quite thin and actually quite flat. So a bit like a sheet of paper blowing across the sheet of paper causes it to flutter. What happens is the air flows across. You get to the other side, the edge is lifts up. Then the next gas comes underneath, edges and lifts down. So you get this increasing oscillation and this can actually cause early severe damage. The most severe damage was actually caused sometime afterwards in the 1830s. But within a few days of opening there was an event which caused some significant damage to the bridge. This broke hangers and which then needed to be replaced. So a wind was a big issue and there was some debate of what problem was. Was it the chains being excited or the deck? It ultimately became obvious that it's the deck but there was a considerable debate over which element it was. Interesting. Were there any other known challenges that they faced over the course of the 7-year construction? All the project was quite complex and the were challenges. One of the things that happened was the ship showing down from the quarry. One of them sunk. Very minor point. I think something like this always gives you a challenge is all something that needs to be addressed and as the work progressed, as the lift lifting the second chain things were a little bit slow. And so the raft was start to be pushed by the tide and the change is down. So childhoods told them to lift it into place in an event and they were dribbling replace it once, it was a damage path which came once again in the self-situ. This is what they did. They basically stopped that a long clamp over the damage section, removed the damage links, and then replaced them with new links. And it's an interesting point, actually, because to do that, you need to have a confidence that all the pieces you were using were precisely the same. That whole bridge was made of links and components which could completely enschangable, which was quite unique at the end of the time. Yeah, I mean, today we're used to manufacturing of pieces in a factory, but let's suppose it would not have been like that then. Well, no, but that was one of the processes that was gone through. And the John Provis was avoided to go to apt and magnum, really, links were being produced. And each link was tested for dimension, but also strengths, and once it had been tested, which is then given a proof mark and sent out as complete and et cetera. It wasn't much better here, but there were some figures among them. So it was quite a variable, but nonetheless, the only high level of a really high standard was maintained throughout. Very impressive. So we talked about how the deck would flutter in the wind, because it was just wood at the time originally, I believe, was that right? Yes, it was, it wouldn't deck, spanning between obviously broad-time hangers. There was some broad-time trussing underneath the deck to strengthen it, but it actually, the primary members were timber, yes, moving on. And I suppose the loads that it was intended to carry originally were not great compared to what we expect today would have been, I don't know what kind of traffic would have been using it. So yeah, but actually, if you look historically at some of the loads that should be transported around the country, they were a number, which was quite large, so very heavy loads were actually pull axles underneath them, and then build a team of horses to them. So 20-30 times, it's not unusual. Yeah, that's more than I expected. So let's go ahead to how it survived 200 years. It's had a lot of upgrades over the time. I mean, I think there was a replacement of the wooden span with a steel deck in the night before the turn of the, not 20th century. Well, the, historically, the first deck, which helped with the regional design, was very severely damaged in 1839, they were stormed, and so, 29% of the hangers were broken. So what happened was they actually looked at the deck and were in progress and came back onto the job, and they designed a very much improved deck. Now that deck then survives through with some repairs at an overseas various parts of the bridge, in 1893, when beta was a steel trucking, or steel trucking deck on the bridge. Now the problem with that, of course, is it was much, much heavier than the timber deck, and the stricters are loading very severely. That load restriction had the effect of limiting the connection between the island and the mainland. It was very much of a concern, so just before the Second World War in 1938, '39, so how exciting the game was pointed to them, look at improving it. One of the things that the Ministry of Transport wanted was a deck that allowed vehicles to pass on another in the event of a breakdown. There's required a completely precinct on the bridge. The original chains, there were four groups of four chains, each two supporting a deck, and they were replaced by two groups of two chains, so these were high tents on the steel, and they supported a steel deck, which had a double carriageway, so that is the current bridge, and that has survived, right, so it's the present, with all the human maintenance works, we'll continue the service. And also at some point, another crossing was added, right? Well, yes, the next crossing was, of course, the Railroad Bridge, the Pratani Bridge, and in many ways, that's another story, which is also a iconic bridge, also a milestone in engineering, but it was pretty ancient, 50, but in 1970, there was a fire, which severely damage the Royal Tire and Box, and it was completely that had to be replaced, a network rail who, which was owned of the bridge at that time, had to be well-expensive, so the Royal Shoveless Civil War, if we can put a road deck on it, we'll pay half, so that the deal was assessed, so the fact that you had the second crossing at that time, that that was a complaint crossing while road and rail. I didn't realise that, interesting, as you say, that's another story, so going back to the original man-eyed crossing, let's discuss when you got involved with it, when did you start working on it, and what was the job? As I say, that was in 2000, when 1998, 2000, that period, when we were improving the deck, we lifted the original concrete deck off, which was quite heavy and was giving severe problems in terms of surfacing, so I replaced it with a lightweight concrete deck, the effect to that, of course, was to reduce the weight on the deck and allow, let's put heavier loads onto the bridge, that a lot of work has been concerned about keeping up with highway loading, so I was involved in that, and after that I was carrying on in the area and did several other jobs, some more dramatic others, so we had a car crashing to a hangar on one occasion, dismantled the hangar and repaired it and then put it back in place, so there are always things to do, and then in 2005, we repainted it, and that was a bare metal repaint, because prior to that, it had been completely repainted since construction in 1939, so it was necessary then to strip right back, and we were actually taking up to 30 layers of paint and in that force, because of the age of the paint, there were three tons of leads, which would be quite careful about how we did that, but so it's now has completely new coating system, which leads bottom requirements, that is now to be overcoaches, go into the next area. Who were you working for at the time? I was working for high, well, a bit of a conflict, I was seconded from high point bendled to hider, and so you're only working for two peaks, but really, just because there's a convent. What was it like working on the bridge? Did you get a sense that you were working on a very historic piece of infrastructure? Yes, you do, but also in fact, that perspective is very enjoyable, nonetheless, you're still very much aware that you have tasks complete and that's it. important aspect of it, completion of the task and hand making sure that you're doing everything correctly so that the bridge can be maintained and retained in service. And did you have inclement weather that you had to battle through? Yes, so I remember one occasion I was looking at doing some work on it and my piece of information didn't have. So I actually went out on that day to go and check the dimensions and the numbers, make sure I draw it right and I actually had to hold on to the handrail the whole way across. It was actually going so strongly and we also had those sort of issues when we were working out from time to time, but sometimes there was so much fear that you had to withdraw from motion. What about the opposite? There must have been days when it was very clear and it had some great views. Absolutely. I mean the views from the bridge, the London was straight, fantastic and the sunrise and sunset, also fantastic. It's a beautiful place to work, actually. I can imagine. So have you followed what's happened within recent years? It's had some more issues than the tall hangers. All the hangers have had to be replaced. Have you followed that work? Yes, I have. It's one of those unfortunate things and it has now been resolved so the bridge is back in service. The next step obviously is to repaint it and hand over back to Welsh Government. Yeah, but unfortunately I think it was announced just earlier this month that it's not going to be finished in time for the bicentennial. It's going to work. It's going to continue into 2027 because I understand that it's primarily painting. There have been one or two issues that have come up. We've prevented work and so there's been various times. These things have been delayed so a little bit more. Yeah. But you would argue that it's important to keep this bridge in operation, would you? Oh, absolutely. It's the primary links between Anglesian and North Wales. Also a very important link from London. I had still, but even so, the road over to Richangu, it does take quite a lot of load off. But in the event of high rims, then that may not be the extension for you to be under the only road. Yeah. I mean, there are consistent calls for a third midnight crossing from people in the area. Do you think that would be good? Well, it's not a straightforward thing to just build a bridge. You've got to find a route to it and from it. You've got to also manage to find a location for the bridge. The streets are not very friendly place to try and build things to start. So you're talking about a 30 complex exercise. Desire will do it, but nonetheless very complex and requires very careful consideration before proceeding. A long way to go before that ever becomes a reality, it seems. Yes. I mean, there's being quite a few proposals, some of which are quite realistic. You can't actually find bridges together in this kind of location. Do you need bridges to be spaced out because of the conditions around them? So you can't sort of simply widen the existing area event, the concept of widening which I mean, for example, is not on and when I clearly could not be widened. Interesting. It has been widened, came out for example, been widened. But this one unfortunately is not in there. It's not coming to that category. Just to finish, what would you say is the symbolic importance of this bridge, the original men I crossing? I think it's an icon of engineering. Number of times I stood there. While I've been working on the bridge and I've heard people talking about it, and people have actually arrived at the bridge, stopped their cars, got it up, was their cameras, and they're actually stunned by the bridge. It still has that impact. I'm not talking about simply local people, I'm talking about tourists across the world. It is an internationally recognised bridge. It was also recognised by the social, still in use of America as well. And there is a plaque which they have made from the bridge back in 2003. Wow, internationally recognised. Very good. Well, I'm definitely going to have to come visit one day. Thank you very much William for giving us that history lesson. It's been really interesting. 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