Alleged "floating" railway line at Ryde

[AndrewE]

A writer might have reasonably described the pier and station appearing to float on the sea without diverging from the truth. I don't see where they would have obtained the notion of them actually floating though. That's what makes me think it might have been a prank gone wrong, as others suggested.

== Doublepost prevention - post automatically merged: 31 Mar 2025 ==


Again where on earth would an AI get the notion the pier floats? Maybe a case of hallucination!

maybe the AI "read" a figurative Victorian text that contained your first idea, then reinforced it by something it read about the Kerch bridge approaches?

 

[Gostav]

Spanning the Missouri: Nebraska’s Pontoon Bridges - Nebraska State Historical Society

Pontoon bridge at Plattsmouth. NSHS RG3384-10-71 Nebraska City’s pontoon bridge spanning the Missouri River was opened with much fanfare in August of 1888. Constructed by S. N. Stewart of Philadelphia […]

history.nebraska.gov

Floating bridges for railroads do exist in history, usually as temporary replacements until a permanent bridge could be built, such as Nebraska City’s pontoon bridge spanning the Missouri River.

For obvious reasons, such structures can only be used in calm waters and almost impossible on sea.

 

[AndrewE]

Floating bridges for railroads do exist in history, usually as temporary replacements until a permanent bridge could be built, such as Nebraska City’s pontoon bridge spanning the Missouri River.

For obvious reasons, such structures can only be used in calm waters and almost impossible on sea.

but the clue is that they invariably include the term "pontoon" in the description...

 

[fandroid]

My first thought on reading the article was that the writer was somewhat confused about the meaning of the word "floating".

They seemed very excited about the railway over the sea, while not realising that not very far away Portsmouth Harbour station is on piers over the sea. Even Blackfriars station in London is suspended over tidal water, ie the sea.

The story did seem to also confuse the history of pier tramway with that of the main railway at Ryde.

 

[Deepgreen]

I saw this item pop up and dismissed it as part of the ever-increasing plague of gutter journalism. Now, if they had done an item on the WHL across Rannoch Moor...

 

[Rick1984]

Not floating, but there is a rare cable stayed railway bridge on the Chertsey branch.

Lyne Bridge (Surrey)

www.kentrail.org.uk

This is a distinctive cable-stayed railway bridge, which crosses the M25 immediately south of that motorway’s connection with the M3 at Junction 12. The bridge takes its name from the village of Lyne, Surrey, the eastern fringe of which borders the M25, and upon its reinforced concrete deck is carried the double-track “Chertsey Loop”. The latter links the Waterloo Main Line at Weybridge with the route to Reading via Staines at Virginia Water, and is about 5½-miles in length with intermediate stops at Addlestone and Chertsey.

 

[Sun Chariot]

Not floating, but there is a rare cable stayed railway bridge on the Chertsey branch.

Lyne Bridge (Surrey)

www.kentrail.org.uk

Whenever I drive under it, I think of it as the ugliest railway bridge I've ever seen...

 

[Gloster]

Going into town today it struck me that perhaps the journalist has got confused between Ryde Pier and the Floating Bridge, the chain-ferry across the Medina at Cowes. It is still a pretty impressive piece of confusion and lack of checking: they probably see the Isle of Wight just as one amorphous lump.

 

[MarkyT]

Whenever I drive under it, I think of it as the ugliest railway bridge I've ever seen...

Yuk. It just looks wrong with the columns thicker towards the top. Maybe they needed the greater mass and volume of concrete up there to secure the cables into but had only a limited footprint available in the median. The extreme skew adds complexity.

 

[SargeNpton]

Again where on earth would an AI get the notion the pier floats? Maybe a case of hallucination!

Perhaps the same AI that was used elsewhere to generate an article that suggested the word "Tuesday" was American in origin.

 

[Regeff]

The potential mistiming hadn't occurred to me when I read the article when it was first published.

It's either that or just sloppy journalism. There is no attempt by the writer to explain the technical aspect of a floating railway.

 

[DelW]

Not floating, but there is a rare cable stayed railway bridge on the Chertsey branch.

Whenever I drive under it, I think of it as the ugliest railway bridge I've ever seen...

Yuk. It just looks wrong with the columns thicker towards the top. Maybe they needed the greater mass and volume of concrete up there to secure the cables into but had only a limited footprint available in the median. The extreme skew adds complexity.

Quite a few years ago, a poll in New Civil Engineer voted it ugliest bridge in Britain by quite a margin.

The designers were most upset, and replied in a later issue with a defence of their design. The heavy skew was one of the aspects which had caused them difficulties.

I think that the thickening at the tops of the columns is principally to accommodate the stay cables passing through them from two directions.