Structure
The two towers were 180 feet (55 m) high and the distance between them spanned by a truss was 1,000 feet (300 m). The weight of the cables suspending the girder was 250 tons. The underside of the girder was 82 feet (25 m) above the high water level. The transporter car was 55 feet (17 m) in length and 24 feet 6 inches (7.5 m) in width and was designed to carry 4 two-horse farm waggons and 300 passengers. A shelter was provided for the passengers. The bottom of the car was 12 feet (3.7 m) above high water level and it cleared the ship canal wall by 4.5 feet (1.4 m). It was suspended from a moving trolley 77 feet (23 m) in length. In conditions of reasonable weather and load the journey took 2.5 minutes. The driver was sited in a cabin on top of the car from which he had an uninterrupted view in all directions. In order to provide power for motors on the trolley a power house was built within the tower on the Widnes side. Approach roads of 320 feet (98 m) on the Widnes side and 470 feet (140 m) on the Runcorn side were built.
Read more about this topic: Widnes-Runcorn Transporter Bridge
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—Mark Twain [Samuel Langhorne Clemens] (1835–1910)
“Slumism is the pent-up anger of people living on the outside of affluence. Slumism is decay of structure and deterioration of the human spirit. Slumism is a virus which spreads through the body politic. As other “isms,” it breeds disorder and demagoguery and hate.”
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“I’m a Sunday School teacher, and I’ve always known that the structure of law is founded on the Christian ethic that you shall love the Lord your God and your neighbor as yourself—a very high and perfect standard. We all know the fallibility of man, and the contentions in society, as described by Reinhold Niebuhr and many others, don’t permit us to achieve perfection.”
—Jimmy Carter (James Earl Carter, Jr.)