Alloa Forth Rail Bridge in action.

[@colinness375]

An absolute gem of a film. Thank you.

[@TheRocktalk]

I've seen photographs of this bridge, but never any film. Brilliant to see the swing mechanism opening to let the boat through. Priceless piece of historical footage!

[@neilbain8736]

It's amazing to see it as it was and in action. I've always wondered about Alloa as a lot of railway has disappeared from the area. I've taken a boat, a 15 foot Dory, up to Stirling Bridge from South Alloa and we had to be careful with our course through the line of the bridge as there is rubble to ground on at a certain point. This is Lek country where the Forth has a phenomenon called The Lek. This acts in effect as if it were an extra two tides a day, but seems to me to be caused around The Windings where the Forth is really twisty up river from Alloa. Water seems to back up in either direction after the tide turns then releases. We had a 15HP Seagull engine. We needed it. We went up against the current at slack water as it was about to flood so only had the river current to deal with for a spell, but it was disconcerting enough. The boat bounced around and it was really quite a lively passage, and we had to concentrate on keeping control. I remember passing Tullibody Inch and looking up its western side channel where it met the main channel. As I watched, relatively flat water suddenly became 4 foot waves at that point but we missed the worst of them. At Stirling Bridge we had a picnic and came back with the ebb tide. Luckily we were going with the flow. It was extremely fast. Boats at anchor were creating a bow wave. The water was flat, just an overwhelming desire to drain East. Paradoxically it was easy to navigate as we just went with it. We were able to beach easily to refuel and set off again. We sailed through the remains of the bridge, remembering which line to take to avoid the rubble, and at South Alloa overshot and had to turn and aim upstream to reach the slipway. We really had to fight to get the boat to make headway and at one point were standing still with the engine at full throttle.

[@briannicholson2971]

Was there last night to photograph it and someone kindly gave me this link, it helps me to understand the bridge when it was operational 😊👍

[@jimi71smw]

a fabulous video, thanks for posting it, when was the film taken and do you know when the bridge was decommissioned as i have only ever known it in it's current state.

[@jamesdouglasjamiesonharrow7981]

I have been no it when it opened about 1954/5 when I used to work at Alloa station at the signal and telephone lines man just before the line was closed from Dunfermline station to Alloa.

[@dct1]

Quality video.