McDonough Street Bridge in Joliet, IL

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(Bridge Hunter, Historic Bridges, Ugly Bridges) Update: The Illinois Flickr Album contains some more pictures of this bridge, including it being raised.

This bridge carries US 6 and 52 over the Des Plaines River. I was heading eastbound on US 6 and when I turned onto McDonough, I noticed that traffic was stopped by the bridge. I quickly ducked into a parking lot and took this picture. I then switched to taking a video. I held the camera for the entire duration of the raising, but later discovered that I had only enough memory left for one second of video! I knew I was low on memory, but not that low. Below is a screen grab from near the end of the video. The second photo in Bridge Hunter is of the bridge in the full upright position.

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Unfortunately, it is lost in the shadows in the above pictures as to how the superstructure rocks back along the foundation. This bridge is of the rolling lift or "Scherzer rolling lift" design. To the right, we can clearly see the semi-circle pivot girder of the superstructure that rocks back along the level foundation. The pivot girder has holes corresponding to the "teeth" in the foundation to keep the bridge properly aligned as it is raised. You can also see part of the rack along the horizontal member across the top. There would be a pinion gear at the center of the arc that engages that rack to raise the bridge. Chicago has replaced many of its rolling lift bridges with trunnion bascule bridges because maintaining the alignment of the foundations in Chicago's swampy soil proved difficult because the load moves across the foundation each time it is raised and lowered.

Some detail shots are below. Note that Joliet has done a good job of maintaining the historic integrity of the handrails.

Update: 

David  Webster posted, Apr 2021

Dennis DeBruler

McDonough Street Bridge and CSX/Rock Island Lift Bridge.

https://www.google.com/.../@41.5129586,-88.../data=!3m1!1e3

Under the lift bridge we can see the west leaf of the Jefferson Street Bridge that is stuck open.

Prairie Creek Grain is filling the barge near the railroad tracks. And we can see a little towboat placing the empty barge in the foreground.

For the first video I heard the bell start while I was getting back into my van and for the second I heard the bell start as I was getting out of my van. So in both cases I had to trot to the bridge and I missed the first part. As is my policy, I kept "filming" until the gates went up so that you can see how long it takes to lock mate and lock the leaves. I've noticed that the operators of this bridge do it quickly compared to many other dual-leaf bridges. You can right-click the image to get the URL so that you can watch it in a separate browser window.




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Dale Bulthuis Jr. video of two northbound towboats waiting while the bridge goes up

Dennis DeBruler shared

The blue bridge is the McDonough Street in Joliet, IL. The top foreground is the bottom of the lift span for the former Rock Island, now CSX, bridge. The truss in the right background is the westbound I-80 bridge. Note a partially filled barge on the right side docked at Prairie Creek Grain.

Dennis DeBruler commented on his share, cropped
Dale Bulthuis Jr. also posted this photo of the two towboats. [After he posted the video linked above.]
Lloyd Scott Hardin: That was me weeeeee

Dale Bulthuis Jr posted two photos with the comment: "PRAIRIE STATE & JOHN D NUGENT coming up through Joliet."

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