Industrial History: South Branch Bridge, Revisited

20150705 2516, West Elevation

The primary posting for this bridge is August 2014. I'm doing this "supplement" posting because all of the pictures in the primary posting are of the east side. All of the pictures in this posting are of the west side. This shot was taken from the Canal Street Bridge.

This towboat is the smallest that I have ever seen. I include a speedboat in the picture to illustrate it is not much longer than a pleasure boat. Note the pilothouse sits on a scissor jack so that it can be raised to see over an empty barge. The top of the ladder would be about the height of the top of an empty barge. I wonder if that ladder can fit under the railroad bridge. It is the lowest bridge on the river and Ship and Sanitary Canal.

Moving further north along Canal Street to get a different angle of the bridge, we see the marina has a crane permanently mounted (no tires) to move boats in and out of the water. During the summer months, most boats a moored in the lake. During the winter months, they are stored in marinas like this one.

On a beautiful Sunday afternoon after a very rainy June, there was quite a bit of pleasure boat activity on the river. The boats traveled rather slowly through this area.

2657

In contrast, the boats traveled fast under the California Street Bridge. But they did slow down before getting to the scissors bridge.

Walking further north to get another angle of the north tower, we see that there are still some sailboats being stored in the marina.


3:15pm

A corollary of Murphy's Law: after I cross a bridge, something interesting will happen on the other side. In this case, an Amtrak train went south on the bridge. The traffic on Canal Street was heavy enough that it was not worth trying to cross it for a passenger train. The lead engine was 28 and here we see the trailing engine --- 27.

As with all trains on this bridge, it was moving slowly. It took over a half-minute for it to cross the bridge. Unfortunately, since all of the cars look a like, I can't determine how many cars it had. I know it had at least four.

3:15:12

3:15:42

3:15:24

Update:

20160416 2233 10:57 am

While I was in Ping Tom Park after checking out the 16th Street Interlockings, I noticed a speed boat in the middle of the river by the bridge. The last time I saw a speed boat by that bridge, they waited for hours, and I took pictures on 18th Street as well as in the park. They were still waiting when I left. But this time I soon heard a siren. I was close to a post holding a life preserver, so I propped the camera up against it to catch the bridge going up. I know there are cameras on the bridge so the remote Amtrak operators can see the locks. Evidently, there are no cameras to allow them to see the boats. Not only did the bridge go up, it stayed up. I quit recording while it was up. Then did another recording when it went back down.

20160416 2187 11:07:50am

Update of the update: while I was taking pictures of the Cermak Road Bridge, I took pictures of an Amtrak train crossing this bridge. The boat was not there at that time. So it had to wait no more than 45 minutes.

Trains do cross this bridge slowly.