3-043-771 - The Print Collector/Heritage Images

The Autumn Campaign: laying a trestle bridge over the River Stour, Durweston, near Blandford, 1872. View showing '...a party of the Royal Engineers laying a trestle bridge across the shallow water of the Stour at Durweston Mill. The apparatus and the process here employed are quite different from those used for a pontoon bridge over deep water. The trestles are brought down on waggons; a picket-post is driven into the bank, and a picket-cord is attached to it; this is carried across the river by men wearing high boots and wading through the water. The first trestle is then placed in position; timbers called "balks" are laid across it, and upon these are placed the flooring - planks, which are termed "chesses." The next trestle is then carried or floated into position, and the operation is repeated, adding one piece after another, till the bridge is complete. It took but thirty minutes to construct this bridge, as shown in our Illustration, and seventeen minutes afterwards sufficed for its removal. The men in advance, to the left hand, are shown floating the trestles into their place; while those in the middle are putting the balks across, and the men behind them, near the bank of the river, are laying the chesses for the floor of the bridge'. From "Illustrated London News", 1872.