If you look at a map of Scotland, you will see that on the east coast there are several wide river estuaries. The Scots word for a river estuary is a “firth”. Just north of Edinburgh is the Firth of Forth, the estuary of the river Forth. Further north, there is the Firth of Tay, the estuary of the river Tay. Until late in the 19th century, people crossed these estuaries by ferry, or they made a long detour by road to a bridge over the river. But when the railway companies arrived in Scotland, they wanted to build fast, direct railway lines between the towns and citites. They needed to build bridges over the firths.

　　The first bridge was over the Firth of Tay. It was completed in 1877, but it was destroyed in a storm two years later. A train was passing over the bridge when it collapsed, and many people were killed. The collapse of the Tay Bridge was a great disaster, at became an important political issue in Britain at the time. The engineers responsible for the second bridge, over the Firth of Forth, decided that their bridge had to be much stronger. So they built it with steel. It was in fact the first big steel bridge in the world. About 4000 workmen worked on the bridge, which was opened in 1890.

　　And the bridge which they built still stands today. About 200 trains cross the bridge every day. If you travel on one of these trains, you will often see people working on the bridge. They are always there. They are scraping off old paint, or repairing the bridge, or painting or welding. People say that the painters who work on the Forth Bridge start at one end of the bridge and gradually work their way across [ie they go forward, slowly, as they paint]. By the time they reach the other side, several years later, it is time to start painting again. This was never actually true, but everyone believed that it was. In English, if we say that something is “like painting the Forth Bridge”, we mean that it is a job that never ends. By the time you have finished, you have to start again. In our house, doing the ironing is like painting the Forth Bridge. What is it like in your home?

　　However, in today’s newspapers there is a report that the engineering company that maintains the bridge is painting it with a new sort of paint. They have tested the paint on oil rigs in the North Sea. It will last for 20 or 30 years, without repainting. So another great British tradititon has gone. In future, painting the Forth Bridge will no longer be – well – like painting the Forth Bridge.