Report - Warrington Transporter Bridge, May 2013

[Renrutt]

Warrington Transporter Bridge, May 2013

The Warrington Transporter Bridge (or Bank Quay Transporter Bridge) across the River Mersey is a structural steel transporter bridge with a span of 200 feet. It is 30 feet wide, and 76 feet above high water level, with an overall length of 339 feet. It was built in 1915 and, although it has been out of use since about 1964, it is still standing. It was designed by William Henry Hunter and built by William Arrol.
It was originally one of two such bridges across the Mersey at Warrington, the other having been erected in 1905 slightly to the north of the existing bridge, and described in The Engineer in 1908. A third transporter bridge over the Mersey was the Widnes-Runcorn Transporter Bridge (built in 1905), dismantled in 1961.

The bridge is designated by English Heritage as a Grade II* listed building, and because of its poor condition it is on their Buildings at Risk Register. The bridge is protected as a Scheduled Ancient Monument.

Whilst in the area I thought it rude not to give this little beut a go. Being quite local to Middlesbrough, I managed to get that one ticked off many moons ago and have naggingly wanted the other two since.

So I grabbed the co-ordinates, chucked them into my phone and off we went, finding ourselves parked directly under the bridge...

So, all done, up and down in no time, winner, all good....


...only at this point did we notice that we'd inadvertently driven right into the live chemical site that the bridge sits in.... and that gate that we didnt realise we'd driven through had locked behind us. Great.

Plesntries were exchanged with a near by lorry driver who called security to let us out, at first assuming we'd been working on site. Sound guys with no qualms, just infromed us we shouldn't really be there and we were on our way.


Cheers to Oly for the lift down there and to him and LE for sitting it out at the base while I had my fun


2 down, 1 to go.


Cheers for looking ​