Llandudno contractors could learn from Rhine bridge builders

Nov 26 2009

AS we face nine months of frustration and traffic jams during the rebuilding of the Maesdu railway bridge, we might reflect that at the end of March 1945 General George Patton’s combat engineers were faced with having to quickly bridge the Rhine, at that point 300 yards wide.

Their first attempt was a pontoon bridge, suitable for tanks and infantry, which took them six and a half hours to build – yes hours.

Within a week they began to build a "proper" high level railway bridge which included erecting piers in the river and in 11½ days it was carrying a stream of trains loaded with ammunition and supplies into Germany.

Mind you, by then the engineers weren’t being sniped at, shelled at or bombed quite as heavily.

The span at Maesdu is not even a tenth of the span of the above bridges.

And it has taken them several days just to arrange a few cones and safety barriers.

It will be interesting to see how quickly they put up even the puny pedestrian footbridge.

I bet it’s not just a matter of days. And nobody’s even shooting at them!

So much for progress and "state of the art" building methods.

Taxi Driver