To celebrate the opening of the Tay Road Bridge, the Evening Telegraph issued a couple of souvenir supplements.The one above is the 2nd of them which came out on Wednesday 17th August 1966, the day before the official opening.
Inside it has lots of information about the building of the bridge, technical details, a bit about the guys who built it, the workers who died and an optimistic outlook for how Dundee would prosper in the future.
There are also loads of local ads, some of which I'll put up next.
The face on the front of the supplement is one of the men who worked on the bridge, Tony Curran of Inverkeithing.
It also features some of the Fifie workers who would be losing their jobs at Craig Pier's Ferries, but were given work on the bridge as toll collectors, patrolmen and so on.
You can see on the film clip below, some of the construction work being done.
Just shows you what they say about people of yesteryear looking old as Tony Curran of Inverkeithing looks older than a 62 year old would today BTW Retro thanks to you and your suppliers of these clips its keeping this bit of Dundee history alive and out there for the future I wonder if any of the schools look in to thess pages
ReplyDeleteInterestingly, the bridgehead looks no different today due to the work going on there at the moment...
ReplyDeleteNotice none of the workers had much in the way of safety gear then!
ReplyDeleteThe 5 guys who died were - Benjamin Bowness (27) - Archibald Kerr (20) - John McQueen (25) - Donald Ross (25) - James Lennie (50).
The last 3 all died in the same accident and their bodies never recovered, so were still down there somewhere when the bridge opened...and they may very well still be!
Absolutely Brilliant video GG, thank you very much. Talking about safety, can I see a guy standing on top of the moving wagons? There isnt much if any safety rails in view either...
ReplyDelete@ Retro Dundee
ReplyDeleteBenjamin Bowness was my uncle (I am Stanley Bowness's son, Alan Bowness). I had never met him I dont think, I was 7 months old at the time of his death.
There is a memorial somewhere near the bridge I think, for all those that died. We used to have a newspaper clipping of Benjamins mother (Alice) at the memorial.