3-077-770 - The Print Collector/Heritage Images

The Forth Bridge: Luncheon in the Model Room, 1890. 'His Royal Highness the Prince of Wales, on Tuesday, March 4, performed the ceremonies of fixing the last rivet of this immense and ingenious structure, and formally opening the bridge for ordinary railway traffic...It is by the enterprise of the [railway companies which provide] the facilities of travel from London to the north of Scotland on the eastern side of Great Britain, that the Forth Bridge has been constructed - a work of seven years - at a cost of two and a half millions sterling...The opening ceremony, during which the keen rough wind, in that exposed situation, must have provoked an appetite for luncheon, was followed, at two o'clock, by a good banquet in the engineers' Model Room at the bridge works. This large room had been handsomely decorated with crimson, gold, rose-colour on the walls, and stripes of white calico, edged with blue and red, concealed the roof. Over the platform occupied by the head table was a magnificent canopy of crimson-and-gold plush, with the Royal arms, and the motto of the Prince of Wales on a gold scroll. Shields bearing the arms of towns in England and Scotland, and devices of the great railway companies, were ranged along the walls'. From "Illustrated London News", 1890.