From the Bristol Evening Post
This railway crossing - originally designed to carry a main road along its top - was built to accommodate the newly-completed Docks Railway and the extensive sidings at Canons' Marsh, which could take up to 600 wagons.
Constructed by local firm Lysaghts, it cost ú70,000 to build, almost twice the original estimate. It was the Corporation which paid the difference, rather than GWR, which only stumped up some ú18,000. It meant that goods from all the harbour lines could now be taken across the New Cut and made up into trains at Ashton Meadows before going onto the main GWR line.
The movable section of the bridge, which weighed 1,000 tons, was operated hydraulically from an overhead cabin, which you can see in the "Then" picture, on the right.
Each opening and closing operation - necessary to let vessels up and down the New Cut - used 182 gallons of water.
As the use of the New Cut by larger vessels diminished, however, the bridge was swung less and less. After 1936 it ceased altogether.
Road traffic approached the bridge on high new embankments constructed from soil excavated from the railway works. Traffic going to the south west used Ashton Avenue.
It meant that Colliter's Brook - now obliterated by modern flood relief measures - had to be diverted, its broad, muddy mouth being almost on the site of the bridge abutment.
The construction of the Cumberland Basin Flyover in the early 1960s, of course, changed everything and it is now difficult to envisage the bridge as it once was. But it still has a use - as a cycleway.
Rejoicing: The picture, right, shows the thousands of people who flocked onto the bridge on opening day