There is something about a bridge which is a bit special: these are among the biggest man-made structures in existence ... Tower Bridge: this is the most fairytale bridge in the world ... It’s really an iron bridge clad in stone, and that’s the secret. Rory McGrath, Industrial Revelations s5e3: Bridges
The biggest and most expensive Meccano set ever made: the iron bridge in Coalbrookdale ... The world’s very first iron bridge ... Darby’s bridge cost £6,000. ibid.
The revolutionary Menai Straits Bridge ... a radically new way to build bridges: this is the first time anyone had tried to suspend a big road from towers using metal cable: a suspension bridge. ibid.
The Clifton Suspension Bridge. Brunel wanted to build the biggest suspension bridge in the world spanning the greatest distance. An elegant bridge that seemed almost to float across the sky ... Brunel never ceases to amaze ... What Brunel called his Little Darling. ibid.
To a bridge whose stories begins with a disaster ... What was created was the greatest civil engineering project of the nineteenth century. A marvel of girder and rivet – the Forth Rail Bridge ... The biggest rail bridge in the world ... The art critic William Morris described this bridge as ‘the supremest specimen of all ugliness’. ibid.
An engineering leviathan ... the Humber Bridge. This bridge is over two kilometres long and is made up of 27,500 tons of steel and 480,000 tons of concrete ... Opened in 1981 ... Until recently the biggest in the world. ibid.
One of the great engineering marvels of the nineteenth century. One railway in particular enthralled the general public: the GWR or Great Western Railway. Soon to be known as God’s Wonderful Railway. And it was considered the crowning achievement of its young engineering chief: Isambard Kingdom Brunel. Rory McGrath, Industrial Revelations s5e6: Transport Systems
The Underground: no-one had done it before ... In 1863 the world’s very first subterranean railway opening linking Farringdon to Paddington. ibid.
Soon an extraordinary canal network, the most extensive in the world, fanned out creating a new industrial Britain. ibid.
The golden age of canals was short-lived. By the mid-nineteenth century a new invention had revolutionised transport: the steam engine. ibid.