Bridges and Meccano Sets

This footbridge across the Huron Basin at Salford Quays always takes me back to my childhood because it looks like the kind of thing you could build with the Meccano set with which I used to play - particularly when you look at the bridge end-on as in the photograph below.

It's a truss bridge which Wikipedia tells me is 'a structure of connected elements forming triangular units'.

It also takes me forward a few years from my childhood, because I remember that the bridge has not always been in its present position. It originally carried the dock railway line across the canal midway between Trafford Road and what is now Water's Reach (the continuation of Sir Matt Busby Way), behind Sam Platt's pub. The two pictures below are from an excellent 1997 book 'Manchester Ship Canal' by Edward Gray and headed 'Sutton's Photographic History of Transport.

The photograph above shows the bridge, at the bottom of the picture, in its original position taking the railway line from one side of the canal to the other.

The picture below shows, I think, the original single track bridge of 1895 which was replaced in 1943 by the current double track version.

The bridge used to sit on this structure in the middle of the canal about which it used to pivot when opened.