Tower Bridge

Website: http://www.towerbridge.org.uk

I've tried twice to visit Tower Bridge but each time something has gone wrong. I finally managed it today.

At about 2pm I bought my £4.50 student ticket from the ticket office in the north tower. I passed through the security metal detector and x-ray machine and into the waiting lift. We waited for the lift to get full wall-to-wall and then ascended to the top of the tower. A woman gave us an informative welcome message which was timed to last exactly as long as the lift journey and then we all exited into a video room at the top of the tower. There were good views:I watched a short film about why the bridge was built and the competition for the best design. It was built to easy road traffic in the east of London but also had to allow ships to pass. There were loads of wild and wacky designs - including bridges that slid back and forth across the river, or bridges that snake around the ships in complicated shapes. After fierce scrutiny the current hinged design was chosen. It was built from Scottish steel with 2 million rivets and opened at last in 1894. It was deliberately designed to look old-fashioned to fit in with the Tower of London nearby.

After the video room we got to walk out on the walkway that connects the top of the towers. I didn't know this was a walkway until today (I'd thought it was just for decoration). This was great and I was impressed by the views over the river. The walkway was enclosed but there were windows that we could take photos through:
There were information boards too where I learnt a lot about the bridge. The bridge has appeared in a few adverts:
A plane flew through the bridge:
After World War II there was a suggestion to encase the bridge in glass to provide living space and offices etc:After the walkways I went down the south tower to watch another video about how the bridge was built. I learnt that in World War II the Germans deliberately tried not to bomb the bridge because it was a good landmark for their bombing approaches into London.

I got the lift down the tower and we were told to "Follow the blue line" to the engine rooms:
The engine rooms were the final stop of the tour but possibly the best bit. We learnt in detail about the machinery that powers the raising and lowering of the bridge. We got to walk around the steam-powered machines (which have now been replaced by electric power) and understand how all the stages fit together. I found it fascinating to see how complicated it all was and how clever the engineers must have been to design it.

The last part was the "Engineering gallery" with a number of hands-on demonstrations about physics and engineering principles applied to small models of the bridge. One young boy (who didn't work there but was just a visitor like me!) enthusiastically demonstrated one to me. He got me to sit on a chair which he raised off the ground by turning a geared wheel for a long time. Then, with my feet dangling, he pressed a button and my weight applied hydraulic pressure to an oily liquid which came shooting out of a pipe nearby. This is the same principle as the massive "accumulators" used to store power which is then used to work pistons that raise the bridge:
These demonstrations were much better than the hands-on stuff in science museums because you could see the ideas had been harnessed and applied to solve a problem. In museums the demonstations are often just pointless mechanisms that show the principle working in a sterile way. It was more interesting here because it was applied to something.

We ended in a gift shop with hundreds of little models of the bridge available to buy.

Summary: Surprisingly fun and interesting. The videos brought the issues to life and the demonstrations and information boards were clear and interesting.