View To Cannon Street Railway Bridge And St Paul's Cathedral Between The Bridge Piers At The Station. London Stock Photography

The iron bridge carries trains on the South East line across the River Thames to Cannon Street station. Work under the direction of engineer Sir John Hawkshaw began in 1863. Hawkshaw, a former president of the ICE (1862-3) and his fellow civil engineer Sir John Wolfe-Barry designed the bridge for the South Eastern Railway Company. The bridge was opened in 1866 with five spans on cast iron Doric columns filled with concrete and masonry. The span is the distance between the two supports for the bridge. Between the abutments - the ends of the bridge - the bridge is 706 feet (215 m) long. Between 1886 and 1893 the bridge was widened by Francis Brady, engineer of the South Eastern Railway, to a width of about 20 metres. This allowed the bridge to have double the number of tracks, from five to 10. The bridge was extensively rebuilt between 1979 and the early 1980s.