Category talk:Iron bridges
El hierro es básicamente un mineral, y no se utiliza en su forma metálica salvo en los puentes de hierro forjado construidos durante el siglo XIX. Los puentes que (en uso coloquial) se dicen de "hierro" son, en realidad, de acero. Opino que sería conveniente corregir esta categoría. Saludos, --Tano4595 22:26, 8 June 2006 (UTC)
[machine translation to English of Tano4595's comment: The iron is basically a mineral, and it is not used in its safe metallic form in the metal bridges forged constructed during century XIX. The bridges that (in colloquial use) are said of "iron" are, in fact, of steel. I think that he would be advisable to correct this category. Greetings]
- I don't know about all bridges, but the first iron bridge, The Iron Bridge (opened 1781), is made from Cast iron. This category should be kept for bridges that are made of iron, but move brides made of steel to Category:Steel bridges. Thryduulf 16:43, 12 June 2006 (UTC)
Iron vs steel ?
[edit]Do we need to address this issue? At present we have "iron bridges" and a great many sub-types below that. Yet this is a very crude sort of categorisation and we ought to do better. But can we?
We have perhaps five material types to consider:
- Cast iron bridges. These (except a few early examples) are nearly all cast-iron arch bridges, rather than trusses or beams.
- Wrought iron bridges. Widely used up to 1890 for trusses, girders and anything not cast.
- Steel bridges. Ubiquitous after 1890 (or thereabouts) as a cheaper alternative to wrought iron, but largely of similar construction.
- Generically iron (wrought iron) or steel. It's impossible to look at a photo of a bridge from 1870–1910 and say definitively whether it's iron or steel. The cast-iron bridges are distinctive, because of their shapes, but not the trusses or girders.
- Composite bridges of both cast- and wrought iron. These are usually a cast-iron arch supported by additional wrought-iron tension members. The canon example of this was the Dee Bridge, which fell down, so it's not a widespread type, but they do exist.
- The very common case of an iron truss across cast-iron pillars is a wrought-iron truss (such as the Severn Bridge), because the load-bearing spans are purely wrought-iron, so this is a simple case.
For suspension bridges there's also a distinct switch from chains (nearly all wrought iron) to cables (always steel). We don't strongly reflect such a distinction as yet, and if we did do, it would be on chains / cables first. Personally I'd be happy to term these "suspension chain" and "suspension cable" forms, without specifying the metal, as it's usefully implicit (steel chains are pretty rare).
Note that naming isn't a help, as "the iron bridge" is about as genericised a title as "old bridge" vs. "new bridge" is. Especially with international language variations.
Thoughts? Andy Dingley (talk) 10:21, 27 October 2019 (UTC)