Painting any structure the size of Tower Bridge in London is a major undertaking, but this bridge has an extra complication – it can’t open for 6 months while having a new coat applied.
The world famous Tower Bridge is one of the few “openable” bridges in the country, with the two “bascules”, or drawbridges to us, being opened around 1000 times a year to allow any river traffic taller than 30 feet to pass safely underneath. But for the next 6 months, the bridge won’t be opening at all.
It has taken contractors around three years to paint the non-moveable portions of the metalwork on Tower Bridge using a massive 22,000 litres of paint and around 44,000 man hours to complete this huge task. Now they’ve come to the point where they need to paint the bascules, and since it might be a little tricky to hold onto your paint can at a 35 degree angle, the bridge is going to have to remain down until March.
This is good news for car drivers as they have six months of uninterupted driving across the bridge rather than the average 2.5 openings a day, but exactly how the river traffic is going to cope is another matter. This is however the first time the bridge has been painted since the 1990’s, so hopefully for Thames traffic it won’t need to be done for another 20 years.
In case you ever wondered, it only takes one person with a control switch to move the 2,500 tons of steel up and down using an oil filled hydraulic pump. And the bridge even at controlled speed can be raised in just 90 seconds.
If you want to see the bridge in all it’s painted glory then you’ll need to wait until March 2011 when the work should be finished.
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