| At Maidenhead, Brunel had to design a bridge which would leave the navigation channels in the River Thames unobstructed. This meant building very wide arches. But he also had to keep his bridge as low as he could, so as to keep the gradients on his railway as level as possible. His solution was a bridge with the widest and proportionally lowest arches that had ever been built: 128 feet wide with a rise of just 24 feet 6 inches. Several critics predicted disaster, but Brunel had meticulously worked out the geometry and the distribution of weight through the arches, and his great bridge is still in railway service today. |
|
