Tinsley Viaduct

The lower deck of the viaduct was opened in March 1968 and the upper deck, carrying the M1, on 19 October 1968. The build cost was £6 million. The structure is unusual in that it is built as steel box girders, at a time when most long span bridges were being built of post-tensioned concrete deck design. The use of steel allowed a significant cost saving over alternative methods, but became controversial following two disasters involving steel bridges in 1970 (the West Gate Bridge in Australia and the Cleddau Bridge in Wales) and another in 1971 (the in Germany). Fifty-one people were killed in these failures, leading in the UK to the formation of the Merrison Committee. The report of the…

The Tinsley Viaduct is featured among several other locations as the site of "ground zero" for a fictional Soviet Union nuclear strike on Sheffield depicted in Threads (1984), a depiction of what might have happened had NATO and the Soviet Union entered conflict over hypothetical instability in Iran that escalated into full nuclear war. In the ensuing nuclear exchange, a one-megaton nuclear missile explodes above the Tinsley Viaduct, devastating most of surrounding Sheffield.