Monday, March 12, 2018

(NS/Sou)+(CSX/L&N) Bridges over Tennessee River at Decatur, AL

(Bridge Hunter, Satellite)

Not only do NS and CSX share this bridge, the satellite image shows that they fork in the river on the north side.

1885 Swing Bridge


Street View, 1978-79 Lift Bridge
[The clearance is just 30' so it needs to be raised for barge traffic.]
Street View, maximum resolution

Dale Proctor posted
Southbound on the Tennessee River bridge at Decatur Ala., June 1983. This was after the lift span was installed and before the old swing span was removed.
Rick Smith: I hadn't realized that the swing span (which I used to ride across during the '60s and '70s) hadn't been removed by the date shown,1983.
The lift-span was completed around 1979, and I assumed it was operable by then. Just wondering.
Michael Clark: Rick Smith It was quite a while before they removed it. I think they were hoping to sell it to another railroad, and leaving it in place was probably cheaper than storing it somewhere.
Rick Smith: Thanks, Michael Clark.
Any road considering buying that thing ─ or any swing-span for that matter ─ would have to have been pretty hard-up, since swing-spans are structurally dimensioned for a specific space between fixed-span ends. Plus, tension-compression members for swing-spans usually are not engineered to serve as fixed spans supported only at the ends and would require significant (and expensive) truss modification. Also, the cost of transport could significantly offset any advantage of its re-use, particularly for a Class-III road.
While I'm aware of several instances of moveable-span relocation, those cases have been either with Scherzer Rolling-Lift spans or with vertical-lift spans (along with their towers), since swing-spans are just outright navigational hazards and (woefully) afford the least channel clearance for today's commercial river traffic practice. I guess at the time hoping to sell the thing was a speculation by Southern, which built the vertical-lift replacement. CSX simply is a bridge tenant of that shared segment.

Two photos of the swing bridge proved by Michael Clark in the comments on Dale's post.
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2
My mother with her parents in a small boat on the bank of the river in front of the Decatur bridge circa 1941.

Brad McClelland posted
In the 1980's Seaboard System and early CSX used GE B30-7's on there intermodal trains. These locomotives were given a nickname of TOTE Boats, a L&N term for Trailer on Train Express.
On Friday October 14, 1988 at 2:40 pm, southbound R-121 crossing the Tennessee River in Decatur, Alabama. This former L&N main crossed Southern's Chattanooga to Memphis line. here at River Junction.

Ed Robertson posted four photos and a video with the comment: "Norfolk Southern vertical lift bridge crossing the Tennessee River in Decatur, Alabama. No luck spotting a train crossing but was able to get the bridge lift in operation."
David Mitchell Forrest Sharpe I remember when this was a swing span bridge and watched its conversion to a lift bridge. Between CSX,NS and the river traffic, it gets a good workout round the clock

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Some photos and a video
Jonathan Shoemaker commented on a post
 
SpeedShot Train Photography posted
BNSF 785 Leads a 3 unit Intermodal across the Tennessee River Westbound (South) on a stormy and sunny mixture of weather in Alabama.
[I wonder where that train did a run through.]

The first view I've seen from the north side. Looking at a satellite image, this is just a third of the river's width. The rest of the way north it is an embankment.
SpeedShot Train Photography posted
BNSF Leading a four unit mixed freight train Northbound, over the TN River in Decatur Alabama / September 2022
Roger Riblett shared

Brian Caswell Train Photography posted
CSX Loaded Coal across the TN River in Decatur Alabama - Southbound / 2022
Roger Riblett shared

2 photos posted by Matthew White.
a

b

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