Tomorrow in the early hours of the morning the fourth Forth crossing at Queensferry opens. 
The main photo shows the first and second crossings.  For about nine hundred years the only way to cross quickly from Edinburgh to Fife without a long detour was by ferry boat from South Queensferry to North Queensferry.  It was named after Queen Margaret who frequently travelled from Edinburgh  to the Royal Palace in Dunfermline, then regarded as the capital of Scotland.  When the iconic Forth Bridge opened for trains in 1890 it became easier to travel north from southern Scotland but motor transport still had to wait until 1964 when the Forth Road Bridge opened and the ferry boats ceased to sail.

(Extra) Road traffic far exceeded expectations and problems with the structure and sometimes the weather meant that another bridge was planned.  This was scheduled to open last year but apparently the weather held up construction of the new bridge.  So the Queensferry Crossing is the third bridge but the fourth crossing of the Firth of Forth in the area.
It will open to traffic for two days before being closed until late on September 5th when it will become part of the motorway network and used by vehicles while public transport, cyclists and pedestrians will cross by the old bridge.  It looks graciously elegant in Flumgummery's blip in the sunshine but unfortunately there were only dark grey skies there this afternoon.

(When it was built the Forth Bridge was the world's earliest great multi-span cantilever bridge and remains one of the longest at 2,467 metres.
The Forth Road Bridge was the first bridge of its kind in the UK, the longest outside the US and the fourth longest in the world when it was built.
The Queensferry Crossing is the longest three-tower, cable-stayed bridge in the world and has taken six years to build and is hoped to last till the middle of the next century.)

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