BNSF/Santa Fe+Rock Island Bridge over Kansas River in Topeka, KS

(Bridge Hunter)

3D Satellite

Note that the pier on the north shore is a lot bigger than the others. That would be the replacement pier. So I think I have the correct bridge. Bridge Hunter labels this as the Santa Fe Bridge. But Brian posted the 1951 photo in a Rock Island. Looking at a map, Rock Island was a minor player in this town so I'm assuming they had trackage rights on this bridge.

They would have parked the stone filled cars on the bridge when the flood was predicted to reduce the chance that a span is pushed off of its pier.

Third photo posted by Brian Wunderlick
Topeka Ks, July 1951 CRIP bridge pier failure over the Kansas River
Chad Henton The bridge and the cars are still in the river to this day. River is very low right now, easily seen.
Chad Henton The south half of the current bridge seen on the left side of this photo is still in use( built in 1904), the two spans seen failing here where replaced after this photo.

Someone must have cleaned up the bridge and cars because I don't see them in the satellite image.

Street View

Dylan Edwards Flickr, License: Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike (CC BY-NC-SA)
This area is in the planning stages of becoming Topeka's Riverfront Park.
[Currently, it is rip-rap on the side of a levee on which River Road is built.]