Inside the Queensferry Crossing - as you've never seen it before
The Scotsman Transport Correspondent Alastair Dalton is given an exclusive behind-the-scenes tour of the Queensferry Crossing, including its maintenance monorail shuttle which runs under the carriageway the length of the bridge, and gantries which provide access under the deck.
The Scotsman Transport Correspondent Alastair Dalton is given an exclusive behind-the-scenes tour of the Queensferry Crossing, including its maintenance monorail shuttle which runs under the carriageway the length of the bridge, and gantries which provide access under the deck.
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00:42 - I'm Alistair Dalton from the Scotsman.
00:44 I'm somewhere you will never have seen before.
00:47 I'm inside the Queensferry Crossing.
00:49 I'm below the deck in a monorail
00:52 which runs the length of the bridge,
00:54 enabling much more quick inspections
00:59 of the mile and a half long structure.
01:02 It's known as the rat 'cause it runs through a tunnel.
01:06 And here we go.
01:07 (door slams)
01:11 The main advantage of the deck shuttle
01:13 is it allows us to transit small teams,
01:15 a team of two, out to any point on the deck
01:19 much quicker than it would be to walk out.
01:23 Also has the additional advantage of it,
01:25 there's an area you can take small tools,
01:28 small hand tools, so if someone were going out
01:29 to do a particular piece of maintenance work,
01:32 two man team can go out there with their tools.
01:36 So that makes it safer.
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01:40 (metal clanking)
01:43 We're standing on the under deck maintenance gantries
01:47 for the Queensferry Crossing.
01:49 And we use these for accessing and maintenance
01:52 and inspection of the under deck.
01:54 Yes, the gantry of travels on a twin rail system
01:59 traveling between the North and South towers.
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02:10 (metal clanking)
02:37 Since we cleaned the cables, we haven't had an event,
02:39 but it's too early to say whether that's the reason
02:44 why we haven't had an event or not.
02:45 It may just be the climate the last couple of years
02:48 has not been conducive to ice forming in such a way
02:52 that would cause damage to vehicles.
02:56 However, the evidence from the trials
02:58 and the lab conditions did show that cleaning the cables
03:01 had a beneficial effect.
03:03 The ice accreting is not the danger.
03:05 The real problem is when it falls,
03:07 when it sheds, when it falls off,
03:08 and if it falls off in large enough clumps,
03:10 then it could damage vehicles.
03:12 So that's the issue.
03:13 Well, the latest is that we've completed a review
03:18 of all the sort of mitigation methods
03:21 that are used worldwide.
03:22 And we have come to the conclusion
03:25 that the simplest thing to do on Queensferry
03:30 is to continue with the weather forecasting
03:34 and the monitoring, which we're able to do
03:37 and predict fairly accurately when an event's gonna occur.
03:40 And if an event does occur,
03:41 which is going to be hazardous enough
03:45 to cause problems for traffic,
03:47 then we would still have to close the bridge.
03:50 However, what we have done,
03:52 as we're in the process of doing,
03:54 is introducing new automated barriers
03:57 at the North and South,
03:58 which should make the process of diverting traffic
04:01 from the M90 across Queensferry Crossing
04:04 onto the A9000 Forth Road bridge.
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