London Tower Bridge, Tower Bridge, London. Location: Tower Bridge, London Date Filmed: 11-08-2016 The iconic tower bridge in Central London seen raising for a small vessel heading up the River Thames. Thanks For Watching!
There was a wonderful British feature film made here in the summer of 1958 and released a year later entitled “The Boy and The Bridge”, about a nine year old runaway, Tommy Doyle (Ian MacLaine), who makes a home for himself in a room at the top of the north turret and comes to regard it as his own personal bridge, so much so that one night, he saves the life of a suicidal woman. He sees her about to climb over the bridge parapet and jump into the river. “DON’T”, he yells down to her, “DON’T JUMP OFF MY BRIDGE!” The woman is so startled by this voice from somewhere up there that she changes her mind, believing the voice was of a supernatural origin. Wonderful location filming of the bridge and surrounding areas of the Thames, including the interior of the turrets, the steam engines that control the bascules and the bascules themselves. It was given a Royal Premiere in London, attended by HRH Princess Margaret, and was very successful at the time. However, it’s never been released on DVD and the only place you can see it now is online at BFI player and you have to pay £2:50 to see the 87 minute film on the BFI website. Wonderful music score by Malcolm Arnold, too. Highly Recommended!
Thank you very much! I agree. These traffic lights have been here since 1990 I think. In my opinion, the flashing red lights on a wigwag would be more visible to a motorist than a single red on a traffic light. They might upgrade them at some point.
tradition When level crossings were first used they had gates and no traffic lights. Swing bridges over rivers had traffic lights long before railway crossings did, and they used standard road traffic lights so that no new legislation was needed. Same with fire stations and where roads cross aircraft approah areas (eg RAF Northolt). After wigwags came in with railway level crossings it was still a long time till they were used for those other applications. Eventually wigwags and barriers replaced the road traffic lights and gates and it took over two decade for all the changes to be made. At a few historic locations, like Tower Bridge, it was felt that the newer system would be out of character for the setting. Tradition is a powerful thing, especially when Tourist Money is involved. The other tradition seen here is the time-honoured disdain that two-wheeled traffic shows for traffic control. All those cycles and motorbikes that move into the space between the lights and the gates are in fact breaking the law. They all could get fined (yes even the cyclists) and the motorcyclists could get points on their licences. In practice they are never charged unless they act very dangerously.
Yeah, definitely. Too much people jump the traffic lights here, mainly because they know they're going to have to wait 10 minutes for the bridge to raise :/
Awesome. There's lots of machinery underneath to lift the road segments upwards. One time I might stand on the glass floor and watch it lift. You get a great view from up there.
Tadas Šimkus yes it is for propably a boat or ship to pass the bridge without it collapsing or waiting behind it btw it's a beautiful Place but it's pricey with a 500 to 900 quid a week rent and 500k to 2500k sale but there's 3 airports 2 rail systems buses boats and even subways and Heathrow pods at Heathrow airport and they are like the best transport system ever says a lot of Londoners and there's 100s of theatres across the city and one of the many London parks and even the museums are free and I recomend you to walk on the south bank it's wonderful and it's home to supercars too due to the price to live there
Yeah. I know. Considering how busy the traffic is, everyday, I would have expected the old GEC Halogen Traffic Lights to be changed to some, possibly, Unipart Rail LED wigwags.
The signals don't need to be upgraded, they accomplish the job tasked to them. There are two signals on each approach. They likely use red-yellow-green instead of wig wags due to the high percentage of tourists from abroad who would understand a red signal as opposed to a wig wag.
I understand your point. I'm just saying that all over the UK, traffic lights and halogen wigwags are being upgraded to LED types. Many lift bridges now have LED lights too. As-well as this, flashing reds instead of a still red may seem more of a "warning" to road users as-well as pedestrians. Pedestrians also have loud warning alarms to alert them to clear the bridge.
