1977 I-275 Carroll Lee Cropper Bridge over Ohio River west of Cincinnati, OH

(Bridge Hunter; Satellite, on the north side it is in Indiana instead of Ohio)

Shawn Fox posted, cropped
Max Wolf: I 275 bridge Carroll C Copper mm492 on the OHR
Don Sanders: Just upstream of this bridge is the exact middle point of the Ohio River, Mile 490.5.
Dennis DeBruler: These photos of bridges is a great exercise. This bridge is in a wilderness, and I could not find any decent landside photos.

Roadtrippers

The Indianapolis News: April 22 1973 via Bridge Hunter

B&SV/C&NW Bass Point High Bridge near Boone, IA

(Bridge Hunter; no Historic Bridges; Satellite)

I was going to skip yet another steel tower trestle. But when I saw that the public can ride on this trestle, I decided it was worth noting.

Chris Ciesla posted six photos with the comment:

Bass Point High Bridge sit NW of Boone, Iowa and was originally built by the Fort Dodge, Des Moines & Southern, an electric interurban that ran from Des Moines to Fort Dodge and Rockwell City, Iowa.
It's still possible to ride over this bridge on the Boone & Scenic Valley RR who purchased the ;one from the C&NW in the 1960s to continue operate this section of the RR.

Dave Amo: Greatest trestle in the state.

[I wonder why Dave thinks this one is greater than the Kate Shelley Trestle just a mile or so southwest from here.]

1

2

3

4

5
[This trestle is an example of the design that saves steel by using deeper girders between the towers than over the top of the towers.]

6

A topo map shows that the Des Moines River has carved a bit of a canyon in this part of Iowa. Thus the tributaries such as Bass Point Creek also have a canyon. On this 1965 map, the railroad is still labeled Fort Dodge, Des Moines & Southern. So the C&NW was reluctant to purchase an interurban.

1965 Boone West Quadrangle @ 1:24,000

This extract of the topo map has the Kate Shelly High Bridge in the lower-left corner and the Bass Point High Bridge in the upper-right corner.

1965 Boone West Quadrangle @ 1:24,000

1938 Mississippi Lock and Dam #3 Near Red Wing, MN (Welch, MN)

(John A. Weeks III; Satellite) Red Wing is the nearest town, but most references use Welch, MN.

USACE
Dam is 365' long with 4 roller gates. More than 2,000 feet of earth embankment with a series of upstream spot dikes completes the structure to create Pool 3.
Constructed and placed in operation July 1938. Site underwent major rehabilitation from 1988 through 1991.

The structure is somewhat unique in that the dam itself is not very long, while the river itself is rather wide. The bulk of the structure consists of earth embankments and dikes. The main dam structure consists of 4 roller gates. The lock structure is the standard size for the upper Mississippi of 110 feet wide by 600 feet long.  [JohnWeeks]

USACE-history
The lift is 8'.

John Weeks

USACE-flow

USACE-media

The highlighted curve in the bank upstream of the lock created an outdraft current that shoved downbound tows away from the lock and towards the gated structure. This has caused many accidents, including 11 incidents since 1968 when tows collided with the gated part of the dam. "Navigation accidents can render the four roller gates inoperable, resulting in overtopping and erosion of the embakments. Failure of the embankment system could result in an accidental drawdown of Pool 3 with significant economic and environmental consequences. [USACE-history]

Google Earth, Sep 2009

Using 2009 Tiger funds, an 862' guide wall extension was completed in Apr 2011.

Google Earth, Aug 2011

And a closure dike was completed in Oct 2011. Other improvements such as dredging the channel, improving embankments with sheet pile and riprap, and restoring 313 acres of floodplain were also done.

Google Earth, Sep 2012

The estimate for this 21st Century work was $70m. Until this work was done, USACE rated this structure as the second most likely Corps structure to fail. If it did fail, navigation above Red Wing, MN, would not be possible and the Prairie Island Nuclear Generating Plant would have to be shut down because its water intakes would be above the water level of a drained pool #3. That plant supplies half of the electricity to the twin cities area. [JohnWeeks]

USGS

The post that motivated researching this dam.

Brian Klawitter commented on a post
L&D 3 in 1999....seems like they're thinning out a bit.
[Judging from the context, they are dealing with dead mayflies. This gives us a unique perspective of roller gates that are all the way up.]

1893 Cornith Canal, Greece

(Satellite)

Bresilda Quinto posted
Tight Squeeze  Corinth Canal, Greece

Rose Smith shared
[There are some comments implying the ships have side thrusters.]

You can see tow lines in the photo above. But this photo explicitly shows that the bigger ships are towed through the canal. Through the truss we can see another ship coming. Because the canal is obviously one way, they convoy ships through it.

Florela Petculescu, Mar 2021

It is just 70' wide at sea level. It is 81' wide at the top of its rock walls that go up to 300'. The 70' width limits the width of ships to 58'. The canal is also used for bungee jumping from a height of 256'.

The canal is 3.9 miles long and has a draft of 26'. [britannica]

Does the rock slope change because they know there was a different type of rock or because there was a previous rock slide?

Randolfo Santos, Jan 2020

Street View

Street View from the other side of the Old Bridge

The canal is currently [Summer of 2021] closed because of a rockslide that happened in Jan 2021. (source)

From the beginning, the canal was prone to rockslides because the sedimentary rock has been weakened by the extensive seismic activity in the area. A lot of work has been done over the decades to stabilize the canal walls. Unfortunately, some of that work is now failing.

"According to the studies carried out so far by the Ministry of Infrastructure & Transport, moisture and erosion caused the loss of the stone piers that supported and protected the ground from falling into the canal. The preliminary work on the studies is expected to be completed in September. Then the construction for the project will go up for bid, and the preliminary works on the sides of the Canal will begin subsequently." [GreekReporter]

A satellite image caught a freighter in the canal. This is rare because most freighters are now too big to use the canal. It is used mainly by tourist ships.

Satellite

1999 "Big Blue" crane wreck while lifting a roof segment for a new stadium in Milwaukee, WI

(Satellite)

This accident took the lives of three workmen, cost $200m and caused a one year delay. ($100m repairs and $100m legal implications) [ThinkReliability (source)]

jsonline, one of 61 photos

(new window)  Warning, the language in the video reflects the severity of the problem. Fortunately, there are no F-bombs or oh-my-Gods. You can mute the audio after the roof starts falling with no loss of information. (Before then the audio is informative in terms of the screech of the swing brake and the bangs and pops of the boom breaking.) (A crane fan at 7:40 in Science Channel's Engineering Catastrophes S3 Ep5 "Crash of the Titan" show described the screech as the cables squealing on the drum. At 9:37, the show indicates a last minute change of the position of the crane contributed to the accident, which required the load to be lifted higher than originally planned. This increased the exposure of the roof section to lateral wind-sail forces.)

I've researched this wreck before, but I could not find any notes on it. The following is from memory and current research. This accident happened in Milwaukee, WI, while building Miller Park.

An OSHA official was there because the regular operator refused to do the lift because the wind speed was too high given the weight of the load. When he left the job, he notified OSHA. Meanwhile, his boss told another operator to do the lift. When the crane started to fail, the operator jumped out of the crane rather than doing an emergency lowering of the load. If he had lowered the load, the roof and building would have still been damaged, but the crane next to this one would not have been hit. That would have saved the lives of the three men in the worker basket being held by the crane in the background. (The basket falls to the ground at 0:58.)

It was fixed and opened in another year.

I wrote the above a few years ago in the Crane Wrecks notes. I'm promoting this wreck to their own notes because I came across some additional information in the comments of this post because someone claimed that one of these Transilifts was used in the Milwaukee stadium lift that collapsed. Replies to that comment disagree. Specifically, Big Blue was a 1500t crane whereas these were 2600t. But another comment says that Big Blue was 2600t with a 800' boom consisting of 600' main and 200' fly. But this source has smaller numbers: "For Miller Park, a special crane was required to lift the roof sections. Big Blue was a monster—a 567-foot LTL-1500 Transi-Lift heavy lift crawler crane that could lift more than 450 tons." According to another comment, they did add 100' to the boom to lift the roof sections.

When you add in the weight of the cable, headache ball, rigging, etc., this lift was at 97% of capacity. [CaseStudy]

Philip Slow posted
I believe world record pick and carry at the time..approx 1500 t. Port Kembla. NSW. Pete Abdoo being one pilot.

Brad Irons commented on Philip's post with two photos. Note the person with a white hat standing in a track to give it scale.

1, cropped

2, cropped

1915 NS/N&W Trestle over Dry Run by Compton, VA

(Bridge Hunter; Satellite)

Street View

2011 VDOT Flickr via Bridge Hunter, License: Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs (CC BY-NC-ND)
The bridges over Compton Creek on Route 340 in Page County between Luray and Front Royal. Facing south, old Route 340 is visible at left. (Photo by Trevor Wrayton, VDOT)

Bridge Hunter also states that the bridges go over Dry Run. That is an appropriate name for this valley because I could not even find a creek in this valley. But VDOT claims there is a Compton Creek.

Satellite

David Moore posted, cropped
Active NS trestle (built N&W c.1915) Compton, VA. 7-13-21
Jim Carter: The bridge at Compton is not a trestle. It is a viaduct.
[By most of the definitions that I have read, it is a trestle, not a viaduct. But because the definitions contradict each other, I use the label "bridgeTrestle" for both trestles and viaducts.]

1911 NJT/Erie HX Draw over Hackensack River at Secaucus, NJ

(Bridge Hunter; no Historic Bridges; 3D Satellite)

Jag9889, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons via Bridge Hunter

Public Domain via Bridge Hunter

Dave Blaze Rail Photography posted

UP On NJT!

Another from the top shots of 2018 file.

A most unusual light power set of UP 9082 and 1943 is seen crossing HX drawbridge over the Hackensack River from the town of Rutherfod into Secaucus on NJT's Bergen County Line at about MP 5.5 as measured from the former Lackawanna Hoboken Terminal. Though historically this was former Erie railroad territory and their passenger trains ran out of Pavonia Terminal on the Jersey City waterfront until 1958 when they shifted Hoboken as a harbinger of the 1960 merger with the Lackawanna that created the EL.

HX Draw was built in 1911 and was designed by Joseph Strauss who is slightly better known as the chief engineer of the Golden Gate Bridge. The bridge is one of the earliest Heel trunnion bascule spans built in the US and is a two track cousin to the unique first of its kind 4 track span I shot in Port Clinton, OH earlier this past summer. The Heel trunnion bascule was designed with the machinery installed on the hip end of the truss while the struts pinned to the counterweight bridge tower with brackets and collar bearings, the railings of stairways are on the truss span to the machinery.

This unusual duo led Union Pacific's full office car train from Omaha to the east coast for an extremely special charter to take place the following day. The train itself is tucked away safely in Norfolk Southern's Croxton Yard being prepped and the power was cut off and wyed and then run out to test the functionally of the cab signal equipment that was modified to work on NJT's rails.

Built as plain EMD SD70AH #9026 in Feb 2016 this unit was rechristened The Spirit of Union Pacific and given number 1943 when unveiled in this special livery in Oct 2017. If you care to learn more about this locomotive and what the imagery means and why it was given this number check out this official Union Pacific link: https://www.up.com/.../commemorative/1943-spirit/index.htm

And to learn a bit about what this train was doing so far from home rails here in the Northeast check out this earlier image and the caption accompanying it: https://flic.kr/p/2jdqNum

Secaucus, New Jersey

Saturday June 2, 2018

Roger Riblett shared

lulun & kame Flickr via Bridge Hunter, License: Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs (CC BY-NC-ND)

Street View