Transporter Bridges

Transporter Bridges are a legacy of the closing years of the 19th century and the early years of the 20th, and served a brief but important need.

The huge increase in road transport, however, quickly rendered them obsolete, and although many were planned, little more than twenty-one were ever completed across the world - five of which were in Britain. Just nine still stand in their original form and currently only five are currently still in use - one each in Spain and Germany, two in the UK, one in Argentina - unused since the 1960s, and only recently returned to service in 2018 after restoration - and the last surviving 'pont transbordeur' in France returned to service in 2019 after major works.

The second of Germany's surviving transporters is currently awaiting repair after a ship collided with it. But is the transporter bridge about to undergo a surprising renaissance? Proposals exist for three new bridges, all in France - at Nantes, Marseille and Brest - to replace some of those lost during and after the Second World War. The book is illustrated in colour throughout, using hundreds of photographs - the author's own modern images and many historic photographs and postcards chronicling the construction and operation of these unusual structures.

366 b/w illustrations

About the Author

John Hannavy is a writer and photographer with a passion for engineering history. His work regularly appears in heritage magazines. A retired academic, he has written extensively on railways and other forms of transport, steam-powered machines, the history of photography, and the industrial development of Victorian and Edwardian Britain. This is his fiftieth book. He is a Fellow of the Royal Photographic Society, and was Centenary President of the British Institute of Professional Photography. The award of a Winston Churchill Travelling Fellowship in 2002 allowed him to travel the world in the footsteps of pioneer British photographers.