1907 Swing and Lift Bridges over Atchafalaya River in Morgan City, LA

(Bridge Hunter; Satellite)  4' to 73' clearance  [marinas]

(Update: Since the 1933 road bridge set world records for pier depth, 175', and span length, 608', I moved the material for the road bridges to their own set of notes.)

C Hanchey Flickr,  License: Attribution-NonCommercial (CC BY-NC)

I recognize the Atchafalaya River as the name of the path that the Mississippi River wants to take to the Gulf. The USACE built control structures to let some of the Mississippi flow use this route if the Mississippi is flooding.

I've been passing up lift bridges lately because they are becoming rather redundant. But a few things caught my eye about this one:

• it also has a swing bridge, which has been welded shut
• the river is wide
• the river looks high (But it is not. There are videos below that show it higher.)

Screenshot

I was surprised when I saw this video posted in a BNSF group because my 1928 RR Map shows the railroad was Southern Pacific, and SP got absorbed by UP. A comment on Bridge Hunter indicates regulators forced UP to sell this line to BNSF. I remember when UP got SP that the regulators had to deal with it being too big of a monopoly in the South.

Screenshot

Kodi Brown posted

Kodi Brown posted two photos with the comment:

Evening BNSF family! Thanks to a friend I was able to catch this Eastbound BNSF Herzog train crossing the Atchafalaya River into Morgan City,Louisiana with a Hi- Rail Mow Pickup truck behind it. What a cool catch!
Jazzly Yours
Kodi

Glenn Mark Cassel I worked for Herzog Rail Services for 4 years on the PLUS trains.
A track rider always followed the train when unloading.

1

2

I include various street views and videos because it is interesting to see how much the river level fluctuates.

Street View, Dec 2012

Street View, it looks like the river was pretty high in April, 2018

(new window)


(new window) The YouTube comment indicates this is high water.

Kodi Brown posted a photo and a video of a close up view of a train crossing the bridge with the comment: "Finally!! I caught an Eastbound BNSF crossing over the Atchafalaya River into Morgan City,Louisiana en route to New Orleans,Louisiana."
[From the rocking, he appears to be taking it from a boat.]
Allen Dalfrey I have spent many hours at this bridge from 1979 - 2008 with Southern Pacific and BNSF. I was also the Structures Supervisor in charge of floating out and replacing the 150’ pin connected truss on the west end of the approach and adding an outside walkway to the downstream side of the east approach to the lift span.