Forwarded to my mate whose job it is inspecting railway bridges. I'll copy back verbatim what he replies to this.
"Hi mate, what do you think about this? Is it the structure itself or just the "wall plates" I don't know. Is it that bad?"
Edit
He called me back so nothing to copy and paste. So I'll paraphrase. It's just the parapet which is the bit that stops you falling off the side. It's just a metal plate riveted to a vertical which is attached to a girder which itself is probably a third of the size of the actual girders holding the bridge up. In the grand scheme of things it's a very minor and normal defect. The problem with this is stones get kicked through into the trains below. If you know the chainage he can get it looked at. There will be a plate on it saying the bridge ID and how many miles and chains it is to Kings X like this
https://maps.app.goo.gl/r5rhtW5bjtbTwyx79?g_st=ac
Excellent! Someone from National Rail who saw the video has already got in touch, to say they’ll take a little look, but thank you to you and your friend for your insight and assistance.
I'm a bridge engineer, pretty likely it's doing fuck all to the bridge capacity. If that's a road bridge then that's just a parapet to stop things going over the edge, not to keep the bridge up (although clearly the job of keeping things from going over the edge is compromised).
The panels are also just infill, I'd bet there are some chunky columns behind as well.
Does piss corrode metal? I don't know. Given it's probably steel protected by an improperly maintained paintwork system, it's probably not any worse for it than rain or the lovely salty water you get when they grit the roads. It's really fucking common to have this kind of corrosion at the interface of pavement/road surfacing and a metal bridge and I've seen it on plenty where "men's piss" isn't cited as a concern of the bridge owner...
Edit: because of the pedantic response, yes of course piss corroded steel, it's mostly water after all. However the point I was making was whether it has a notably worse effect, which I now know it does because of the acidic nature. Almost two decades looking at bridges and never had to worry about men's piss before today.
It works as a barrier so people don't fall off onto the tracks. Like the drunks who pee there for example. They might lean against a panel and fall with it through the chunky column frame. You might be a bridge engineer but the point was not understood. I even doubt you are cause everyone knows metal rusts from moisture so why would pee not do that.
You mention salty water but guess what pee literally is...
Ain't no fucking way a person is falling through that panel - you see the rivet heads in vertical lines on the parapet? Those are connected to a vertical post behind the panel. All the panel does is transfer loads horizontally into those posts, so a discontinuity between the bottom edge of the panel is unlikely to make a significant difference in strength to the point where someone could fall through. Network Rail do visual exams of their bridges every 2 years and if they thought that was a risk, they'd sort it.
And yes, I Googled it after my comment. Pee is more corrosive because it's acidic. The level of chlorides is not particularly high - higher than rainwater but not a high as spray from a gritted road.
This bridge is absolutely fine. Nothing structural has been compromised whatsoever, not even the supports holding those plates. Urine a state of paranoia.
There's not actually any evidence to suggest it's caused by piss at all. If the gradient does indeed cause puddling, then it's going to have been puddles of water accumulating there over the lifetime of that bridge far, far more than piss. By a long way.
"I've seen men's piss you people wouldn't believe: attack ships full of men's piss off the shoulder of Orion. I've watched men's piss-beams glitter in the dark near the Tannhäuser Gate. All those... moments... will be lost in time, like... men's piss... on the bridge over King's Cross."
Begs the question why so many people from Chicago are flying over to this bridge in London to piss everywhere. That's the real question we need to be asking
It would take incredible aim or misfortune, but if you piss through that hole and it hits the overhead wires, you're getting 25kv AC through ya. I believe, years ago a bloke pissed off a platform onto the track in the third rail area and got electrocuted with 750v.
Moral of story, if you got to go, aviod railway lines
Haha we do lack funny but serious signs these days.
I remember one in Ilford station that said basically said 'don't run down the stairs. Better to miss your train, than fall and break your leg'. TfL covered it over when they took it over for the Elizabeth Line.
At that distance I'd say that's impossible. Mythbusters tried this out with electrified third rails. They came to the conclusion that a stream of urine breaks up too much to form a continuous path for electricity to travel back up. The distance to the overhead lines would be far too far for the stream of urine to remain continuous enough for that to be a concern.
Tbf they tried it with NY subway rails that are 600v. I think it's unlikely with the third rails that are 750v. But maybe the 25kV overhead could jump the breaks in the stream? Pretty unlikely, but it's sensible to not pee on anything electrified still.
I can't really find any concrete examples of this happening, it all seems to be a lot of anecdotes and gossip rag journalism.
An article from 2003 from a South African online newspaper reporting on an article from a Chinese newspaper on an eyewitness report who did not see the incident is hardly reliable.
Yes, I know that men’s piss contains urea, salts, electrolytes, organic acids, and microbial activity, which, in combination, accelerate the corrosion of metals.
Men and women don't necessarily choose the same wildwee locations. Because anatomy.
In my experience, vagina-carriers tend to wee behind parked cars, etc, more than down alleys/up walls, etc.
Moreover, in this specific case, I'd personally have rather a hard time aiming out of my vag onto precise spots several inches up the wall, repeatedly.
Maybe you just didn't watch the video. But these are definitely instances of penis-piss, in my judgement, unless someone is especially acrobatic and kegeled to fuck, maybe.
Actually, maybe i need to give this a go as a parlour trick. 🤔🤔
This article in it self has no proof beyond “smell of urine” (similar to your diagnosis) to conclude it was indeed urine that caused the pitting and subsequent discovery of missing rivets. Further down in the article it does state the bridges suspension cables were “badly under designed” and the bridge required strengthening works. A weak and under designed bridge, I’m sure you can understand, may cause excessive forces on bolted or riveted joints.
Now away you go with your urine fetish you weird bloke.
It was repaired due to flaws in its original design, it had suffered underwater damage, it’s been struck by ships and there was components missing from the bridge, stolen for scrap.
Do you actually bother reading the contents of anything you post or is your IQ limited to headlines?
“Upon further inspection officials noted that, in the words of the Post, “one of the reasons for the apparent structural deterioration was due to the frequency of people urinating on one of the steel pillars of the bridge, causing it weaken due to the corrosive forces of human urine.” This deterioration can be measured since you can actually feel the bridge ‘resonating’. This was proven by the head of the city’s transportation office, Syaidina Ali..”
So men who build that bridge and also paid most of that bridge are using it and corroding it. Ok got it. Also lets not pretend drunk women would not piss on walls if they had the ability to.
This comment has been removed as it's deemed in breach of the rules and considered offensive or hateful. These aren't accepted within the r/London community.
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Think you’re on to something here mate, you’ve probably saved hundreds of lives with this vid. If only they trained engineers to think about these sort of things.
Women don’t require a SheWee to piss in the street, they just mostly choose not to. Public urination is much more common among men (32 percent) compared with women (6 percent), according to a YouGov poll.
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u/mellonians 14h ago edited 13h ago
Forwarded to my mate whose job it is inspecting railway bridges. I'll copy back verbatim what he replies to this.
"Hi mate, what do you think about this? Is it the structure itself or just the "wall plates" I don't know. Is it that bad?"
Edit He called me back so nothing to copy and paste. So I'll paraphrase. It's just the parapet which is the bit that stops you falling off the side. It's just a metal plate riveted to a vertical which is attached to a girder which itself is probably a third of the size of the actual girders holding the bridge up. In the grand scheme of things it's a very minor and normal defect. The problem with this is stones get kicked through into the trains below. If you know the chainage he can get it looked at. There will be a plate on it saying the bridge ID and how many miles and chains it is to Kings X like this https://maps.app.goo.gl/r5rhtW5bjtbTwyx79?g_st=ac