Crossword-Solution: BASCULES 8 letters, 1 clue 🏆 scrabble score: 12

The opening bridge between the river towers consists of two leaves or bascules, pivoted near the faces of the piers and rotating in a vertical plane.

There are two high-level footways for use when the bascules are raised, the main girders of which are of the cantilever and suspended girder type.

The bascules rotate through an angle of 82°, and their rear ends in the bascule chambers of the piers carry 365 tons of counterweight, the total weight of each being 1070 tons.

Thus the two large river piers carrying the high towers, bascules, and machinery of the Tower Bridge, London, were each founded and built within a group of twelve plate-iron caissons open at the top; whilst four of the piers on which the cantilevers of the Forth Bridge rest, were each erected within an open plate-iron caisson fitted at the bottom to the sloping rock, where ordinary cofferdams could not have been adopted.

The bascules of the Tower Bridge, showing dimly in the haze, were being raised to let a white-funneled steamer that was cautiously sidling out into mid-stream slip down to the sea.