It had gleaned the support of some major players in the emerging UK railway network, amongst them the Great Northern, Great Eastern and Midland Rail Companies. These companies were motivated by commercial success in order to keep their shareholders happy and to attract the new investment that was essential to their expansion across, and exploitation of, the country.
A principal beneficiary of what would certainly be one of the largest civil engineering projects of the Victorian Era would be Kingston Upon Hull in that the incessant flow of manufactured goods and materials from the industrial areas of South and West Yorkshire and Lancashire down south to London for shipping out to global markets would be reversed.
Hull was poised to further develop its long riverfront wharfage and dock basins and monopolise its geographical location as the natural Gateway to Europe and beyond.
The proposed crossing point was to be some 2 miles to the west of the town of Barton upon Humber where the distance between the North and South banks of the Humber was 1 mile.
This position corresponded to a low lying area beyond a steep cliff line, roughly in my perception to the course of the River Ancholme.
An Act of Parliament had previously authorised a rail line, the Althorpe and Lincoln and this could be linked into by the building of a branch line to Appleby and then to Keadby on the major navigation river, The Trent.
This infrastructure would give a direct route into the coal mining and manufacturing hinterlands and that, so far, viable option of shorter route than to London.
As well as this south and south western orientation a railway bridge would integrate with the newly built line at Staddlethorpe (Gilberdyke) some 15 miles to the west of Hull and a main rail line to the hub of Doncaster. The new routes offered to industrialists and the merchant and entreprenurial sectors a slightly shorter distance from Hull to London- saving 21 miles and Hull to Newark on Trent -19 miles.
As for the technical detail of a bridge, that would be most challenging.
The Humber did carry a lot of sail and steamship traffic and so any physical crossing would have to cater for the clearance for masts, rigging and superstructure.
There was some precedent in engineering in the UK to use as a model for this project. Thomas Telford had completed the Menai Suspension Bridge for road traffic in 1826 which although with a total length of 417 metres was actually restricted to a main strung span of 176 metres.
The Humber rail plan predated that of the Tay Bridge, a 2 mile crossing, by some 13 years and perhaps a similar lattice box girder might have been a consideration; the combination of factors that caused the Tay Bridge to collapse in 1879 with multiple fatalities not being foreseeable at that time.
Any structure would have to have a clearance of the central span designed for the highest level of the Spring Tides.
Initial ideas were for a half mile long viaduct from the Lincolnshire side and a quarter mile length from the Yorkshire side. There may have been a lot of talk about this feat of engineering being entirely possible with the talent and flair that existed and which had seen a rise to celebrity status of the likes of Isambard Kingdom Brunel whose Clifton Suspension Bridge had just opened (1864).
As for the cost?
In 1865 a budget of £900000 was predicted which in today's money is £79 million.
When the Humber Suspension Bridge was eventually built and opened to traffic in 1981 it was ,at 2220m total length the longest single span of its type in the world. It cost some £90 million to build which puts into perspective the scale of project from 1865.
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