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The 1½ mile Forth Bridge was the world’s first major steel bridge. It was begun in 1883 and formally completed on 4 March 1890 when HRH Edward Prince of Wales tapped into place a ‘golden’ rivet.

It is often incorrectly called the Forth Rail Bridge or Forth Railway Bridge to distinguish it from the nearby Forth Road Bridge which was opened in 1964. The rail bridge connects Edinburgh with Fife, and acts as a major artery connecting the north-east and south-east of the country. The bridge is a category A listed building (LB9977 Link Historic Environment Scotland).

Painting the Forth Bridge became a metaphor for a never-ending task, because a team of painters took three years to paint it all, by which time the first bits they had done needed to be re-done, so they started all over again. More advanced and longer-lasting paints now make this unnecessary.

Alfred Hitchcock's 1935 film The 39 Steps includes a scene on the bridge and it is featured even more prominently in the 1959 remake of the same film, although there is no reference to the bridge in the original novel by John Buchan upon which the films are based.

Link Forth Bridges Visitor Centre Trust
Link Wikipedia entry

The Queensferry Crossing is the third bridge across the Firth of Forth at Queensferry, alongside the Forth Road Bridge completed in 1964 and the Forth Bridge (rail) completed in 1890. It is a three-tower cable-stayed road bridge, built alongside and to the west of the original Forth Road Bridge which opened in 1964. The new bridge carries the M90 motorway across the Firth with the northern landfall at St Margaret's Hope, between Rosyth Dockyard and North Queensferry and the southern landfall just west of Port Edgar in South Queensferry. Including the approaches, the overall length of the bridge is 2.7 kilometres (1.7 miles), making it the longest triple tower cable-stayed bridge in the world (Link Edinburgh Reporter); each of its three towers is 207 metres (679 feet) high, making it the UK's tallest bridge (Link BBC Scotland).

The original bridge had a planned theoretical capacity of up to 11 million vehicles per year, but this had risen steadily to 23 million vehicles in 2006. Additionally, an inspection programme undertaken between 2003 and 2005 found that the main suspension cables had suffered an estimated 8–10% loss of strength as a result of corrosion highlighting the need for a replacement or additional crossing. Construction of the new bridge began in 2011 and was due to be completed by 2016 but this was delayed twice and it wasn’t opened to traffic until 30 August 2017. The official opening was carried out on 4 September 2017 by Queen Elizabeth II, fifty-three years to the day after she opened the adjacent Forth Road Bridge. Since opening, the new bridge has been used to carry motor-cycles, cars and heavy goods vehicles, whilst public transport, cyclists and pedestrians continue to use the existing bridge.

The project was initially known as the Forth Replacement Crossing. The name Queensferry Crossing was chosen by a public vote in 2013.