Engineering places: Victoria falls bridge

Abstract

VICTORIA FALLS Bridge was the brainchild of British administrator and financier Cecil Rhodes, who envisioned a railway scheme the length of the African continent, from Cape Town, South Africa, to Cairo, Egypt. The former governor of Rhodesia (today Zambia and Zimbabwe) reputedly instructed the bridge's engineers to "build the bridge across the Zambezi where the trains as they pass will catch the spray from the Falls". But sadly, he never even got to visit the falls, and died before construction of the bridge began.