Railway bridge

1750 to 1900

The age of railways began in the 1820s, and led to major innovations in bridge design. Britain is representative of how railways influenced bridge-building in industrialized nations: led by designers Isambard Kingdom Brunel, Robert Stephenson, and Joseph Locke, British railway bridges steadily grew in size as the decades passed. Notable bridges of that era include the High Level Bridge (1849), Royal Border Bridge (1850), Britannia Bridge (1850), Royal Albert Bridge (1859), and Clifton Suspension Bridge (1864). The number of railway bridges in Britain increased from 30,000 to 60,000 during the Railway Mania era. Railway bridges primarily used masonry and stone arch designs, because those could withstand the tremendous loads imposed by trains, but iron beam designs (on masonry or stone piers) were also used. The abundance of inexpensive lumber in North America led that continent to favor timber as a bridge material: using truss designs (for long spans) and trestle designs (for spanning deep ravines).