Tickets have gone on sale for rare engineering tours of Tower Bridge, which offer access to areas of the bridge normally off limits to the public, including the control room, and the bascule chambers.
The tours begin with an audio-visual tour of The Tower Bridge Exhibition, covering the history of the structure, and a chance to walk across the glass walkways 42 metres above the Thames. Visit the engine room and see restored steam pumping engines, accumulators and boilers that were used to power the bridge lifts until 1976.
Then comes the exciting stuff; the bridge's senior technical officers will take you down to bridge control room, the bascule chambers below the river and the machinery room, which houses the hydraulics that power the lifting of the bridge. Learn about the inner workings and ask all the geeky questions you can muster up.
Tickets (which include a souvenir guide book), and they always sell out fast, so book sharpish if the thought of the Tower Bridge engine room gets your engine going.
Tower Bridge Engineering Tours take place at weekends from 31 October-27 March. Tickets are £50 and need to be booked in advance.
See also:
- Video: an animated timeline of London bridges
- Video: Tower Bridge time-lapse
- Tower Bridge: the greatest stunts
- The Victorian critics, and a dog, who hated Tower Bridge
