The Colgante Bridge
Wednesday, 10th August 2005 by Alex Turnbull
This is the Colgante Transporter Bridge across the river Nervión in Portugalete, Spain. This extremely rare type of bridge (apparently there's only 8 of them left in the world) is designed to carry a segment of roadway across a river, and you can see quite clearly in this photo why they came up with this design.
This particular bridge was the first of its type ever built, way back in 1893... well not this actual bridge, as unfortunately it was destroyed in 1937 during the Spanish Civil War (three days before it ended) but those crafty Spaniards had in fixed again by 1941.
In our thumbnail you can see the bridge's gondola, which in the 1890s was fitted out to accommodate first and second class passengers, separated by a net... sounds a bit like British Rail if you ask me.
The entire history of the Colgante Transporter Bridge is available at the official site.
Thanks to Daniel.
About the author
Alex has decided that his title will be Senior Vice President of Stuff.
Check out the cool shadow of the bridge just to the southeast of the Transporter Bridge: View Placemark
The bridge shadow cited by Chris is the “Puente de Rontegi”, part of the surrounded roads of Bilbao.
Here it is the website del Puente Colgante: http://www.puente-colgante.com/
Anyone know what this interesting spot is? View Placemark
The Botanic Park in Barakaldo, the second biggest city of Bizkaia. The first one is Bilbao very near of Barakaldo.
You can see it here: http://www.barakaldo.org/barakaldo/SHome?idi=es Choose BARAKALDO 360º and then choose PARQUE BOTANICO.
I’m sorry, but Barakaldo web site is not in english, only in spanish.
In that linked photo, the sight of the huge LNG-carrying ship going right through the center of the city is sort of frightening – if it ever caught fire …
DOn’t worry: it was empty. The ship was build up the Nervion River (View Placemark) and the photo was taken in it’s first way to the sea.
This is the photo wirh a LNG ship under the Puente Colgante in it’s FIRST walk to the sea.
http://213.96.147.219/puente%20colgante/castellano/acta.htm