NEW WATERLOO BRIDGE.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXII, Issue 19141, 6 October 1925, Page 9

NEW WATERLOO BRIDGE.

SERIES OF SEVERE TESTS. BUSES LOADED WITH SAND. Following a preliminary test of the bridge, 30 heavily-laden buses, but with not a single passenger aboard, were steadily parading the new Waterloo Bridge in London for many hours on Sunday, August 9. The buses, each weighted up to six and a-half tons, with bags of sand representing the frill load of fares, were being constantly driven in single file or double liria, in close order or wide-spaced, and with sudden stops to test from all possible points of stress and strain the new iron bridge. Tha bridge was submitted to the fullest trials that engineering ingenuity could devise and came out of them triumphantly, spans and piers giving gently under weights they are scarcely likely again to experience and then resiliantly returning to position. There was deflection of only one-fifth of an inch on the smaller spans, and two-fifths ot an inch on the big spans, the buses being double-banked upon them as closely as they could be crowded together. "The test has been satisfactory in every way," said the engineer in charge. "The movements, particularly of the piers, were more sensible to touch than actual measurement. Vibration was very small, and not so much as is to be found on a railway bridge. The swinging of the piers was about one-sixteenth of an inch, and the perpendicular movement rather less. We crowded the buses upon each span so as to produce the maximum straining action, each span being taken saparately. "Then we crowded tfiem upon two spans so as to have the greatest maximum load upon a pier. After that we started the buses travelling at 12 miles an hour and stopped them all suddenly at the sound of a whistle, so as to get a thrusting; strain. It was a very severe test and two of the buses crashed and got a bit damaged." The bridge was subsequently opened for traffic.