This makes me cross. From http://www.grannybuttons.com/
"Bridges of BW's sighs
BW has sent out an exasperated press release complaining about the number of canal 'bridge strikes' they have to deal with, particularly from hit-and-run drivers who never report the damage - and especially of the hundreds of narrow humpback road and accomodation bridges.
And of the £2.5million they spend annually in patching up the bridges:
British Waterways looks after 1,800 historic bridges and estimates that at least two are struck every week by modern vehicles, which are much faster and often larger than the traffic that engineers such as James Brindley originally designed them for.
... Nigel Crowe, British Waterways' head of heritage, explains: "Whenever you go over a hump-back bridge in Britain you are likely to be going over a canal. Often officially listed as being of special architectural or historical significance, these bridges have to be painstakingly repaired at considerable cost.
... In practice, having hit the bridge, most drivers leave the scene without reporting the accident meaning that British Waterways cannot recoup the cost of the damage from the driver's insurance company. Nigel concludes: "Every inconsiderate driver who 'hits and runs' in this way is costing Britain’s valuable heritage dear."
To drive home their exasperation they've put up a good set of pictures of 'bridge strikes' on Flickr. The set includes this one from 15 months ago showing Hicklins' Bridge near Stenson, half-demolished by a tractor/trailer in October 2008 and finally being restored this month:
Hicklins Bridge Stenson
And here is the same view yesterday, as journalists crawled over it, almost £250,000 later:
Stenson Bridge repair 1059
(See my post last weekend about the repair of Hicklins Bridge, near Stenson.)
The BBC has a good summary and short video here: Repairs to collapsed Derby canal bridge here.
The Derby Evening Telegraph also did a nice piece about it (see Historic bridge repairs begin), and the story has has an imaginative way of posing the bricklayer - my photo below shows how the photographer did it, building a dummy 'wall' of bricks to peek through at the bricklayer.
By the way, compare my photo below with the one in the newspaper's story, and see how the Telegraph photographer got her fellow journalist to hold the flashgun remotely, so that the site worker's face is illuminated without a shadow. It's a great demonstration of how useful remote flash can be. Good-looking as this lady photographer is, she's certainly no 'blonde'!
Derby Evening Telegraph photographer poses BW's Stenson bridge bricklayer
At the site I asked the BW press officer Stephen Hardy what proportion of that money was coming from the insurance company of the farm tractor/trailer that ended up in the canal. It's still being negotiated, he said, and no one's willing to discuss it. Presumably they are still arguing the toss about if it was a 'bridge strike by an irresponsible tractor driver' or a '200-year-old bridge at the end of its natural life that should have been maintained better.'
A few months down the line, when the repair's done and the orange plastic fencing is taken away, with any luck we'll all conveniently forget to ask for the 'net' final figure for repairing this bridge after a deal's done with the insurance company.
I couldn't get any closer photographs, sorry. I wasn't willing to undergo the indignity of a site health & safety induction telling me how to watch where I was going and duck my head. Actually, the walk down the muddy lane from the canal to the site office (a public right of way) was itself pretty slippery."
Friday, 12 February 2010
"Bridges of BW's sighs
BW has sent out an exasperated press release complaining about the number of canal 'bridge strikes' they have to deal with, particularly from hit-and-run drivers who never report the damage - and especially of the hundreds of narrow humpback road and accomodation bridges.
And of the £2.5million they spend annually in patching up the bridges:
British Waterways looks after 1,800 historic bridges and estimates that at least two are struck every week by modern vehicles, which are much faster and often larger than the traffic that engineers such as James Brindley originally designed them for.
... Nigel Crowe, British Waterways' head of heritage, explains: "Whenever you go over a hump-back bridge in Britain you are likely to be going over a canal. Often officially listed as being of special architectural or historical significance, these bridges have to be painstakingly repaired at considerable cost.
... In practice, having hit the bridge, most drivers leave the scene without reporting the accident meaning that British Waterways cannot recoup the cost of the damage from the driver's insurance company. Nigel concludes: "Every inconsiderate driver who 'hits and runs' in this way is costing Britain’s valuable heritage dear."
To drive home their exasperation they've put up a good set of pictures of 'bridge strikes' on Flickr. The set includes this one from 15 months ago showing Hicklins' Bridge near Stenson, half-demolished by a tractor/trailer in October 2008 and finally being restored this month:
Hicklins Bridge Stenson
And here is the same view yesterday, as journalists crawled over it, almost £250,000 later:
Stenson Bridge repair 1059
(See my post last weekend about the repair of Hicklins Bridge, near Stenson.)
The BBC has a good summary and short video here: Repairs to collapsed Derby canal bridge here.
The Derby Evening Telegraph also did a nice piece about it (see Historic bridge repairs begin), and the story has has an imaginative way of posing the bricklayer - my photo below shows how the photographer did it, building a dummy 'wall' of bricks to peek through at the bricklayer.
By the way, compare my photo below with the one in the newspaper's story, and see how the Telegraph photographer got her fellow journalist to hold the flashgun remotely, so that the site worker's face is illuminated without a shadow. It's a great demonstration of how useful remote flash can be. Good-looking as this lady photographer is, she's certainly no 'blonde'!
Derby Evening Telegraph photographer poses BW's Stenson bridge bricklayer
At the site I asked the BW press officer Stephen Hardy what proportion of that money was coming from the insurance company of the farm tractor/trailer that ended up in the canal. It's still being negotiated, he said, and no one's willing to discuss it. Presumably they are still arguing the toss about if it was a 'bridge strike by an irresponsible tractor driver' or a '200-year-old bridge at the end of its natural life that should have been maintained better.'
A few months down the line, when the repair's done and the orange plastic fencing is taken away, with any luck we'll all conveniently forget to ask for the 'net' final figure for repairing this bridge after a deal's done with the insurance company.
I couldn't get any closer photographs, sorry. I wasn't willing to undergo the indignity of a site health & safety induction telling me how to watch where I was going and duck my head. Actually, the walk down the muddy lane from the canal to the site office (a public right of way) was itself pretty slippery."
Friday, 12 February 2010
