(
Bridge Hunter;
Bridge Hunter;
Satellite)
ELS = Escanaba & Lake Superior Railroad
Why make yet another truss bridge posting?
- It has rather modern (1945) spans with a quadruple warren (lattice) design
- It has been replaced
- Creative Commons photos are available
- These notes allow me to fix misleading information in some ore dock notes
I'm not surprised that C&NW built the bridge because we have seen other C&NW bridges that have this quadruple warren design. With the exception of
a terminal railroad in Morris, IL, C&NW and Rock Island were the only railroads that I have seen use this design. I've also seen this design called a "double lattice."
 |
Greg Mross posted
WC 6619 leads an empty ore train across the Escanaba River at Wells, MI in May of 1997. The weather is damp and dreary but the scene can't be repeated today as the WC is gone, the ancient bridge has been replaced, and the ore dock in Escanaba has been closed. It was also a bit surreal after shooting so many C&NW trains here.
Pete Schierloh: Despite being despised in some circles for it, I will admit here that I am the engineer that designed the replacement spans for this bridge. I defend my actions as simply completing the job the C&NW started, but was interrupted by the war department and rationing of steel during WWII. The C&NW had identified the old truss spans for replacement prior to WWII, but by time the need became desperate during the war the war department wouldn’t authorize new girders. They did allow the installation of new piers and modification of the old truss spans, effectively cutting the spans in half. The C&NW built the new piers low enough to accommodate the future installation of deck girders after the war. It ended up being 70 years after the war, but better late than never. As it was, the 1940’s “new” piers required very little modification to allow the installation of the new deck girders in 2015. This isn’t the only place that the C&NW did this type of truss to girder modification. The bridges on either side of Boom Island in Marinette/Menominee were modified in the same way prior to the war. Anyway, the bridge certainly looks a lot different these days, but it is more robust. One last tidbit. I was onsite when the last truss span was replaced and the last train over the bridge had a caboose for whatever reason. I thought it fitting the last car to roll over the bridge that day was a holdover from an earlier era in railroading like the truss that carried it one last time. George R Widener: Technically the WC still exists, we’re just a paper subsidiary of CN. Greg Mross: George R Widener Just like the GTW and others....
George R Widener: Greg Mross Exactly. It's weird, most administrative and benefits are handled by the IC; and my paystubs come from the Grand Trunk Western. Yet my seniority is only valid on the former WC. It carries over to the DWP, DMIR, and EJE as those three were officially merged into WC by CN but I'd fall behind any protected pre-merger engineer. Gotta love it! |
 |
Postcard via Escanaba Postcard Museum via Historic Bridges and Greg Mross commented on his post
Rob Pfeiffer: Greg Mross And the highway bridge shown on the postcard was also has an interesting history. Built in 1911, closed due to structural issues in 1949, stood idle until 2015 when it was finally removed. It was a good photo platform though. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ueJ_rBthA04 |
The above postcard and others on
eskycards show that the derelict bridge used to be a road bridge. In fact it was a previous route for US-41. The postcards also show that the abandoned piers used to carry an interurban route.
 |
Satellite
[This image is proof that Google Map's change to copyright "Imagery" as 2020 is bogus. Because the truss spans were replaced with steel girders in 2015. In fact, Goggle Earth dates this image as Oct 10, 2013.] |
Note in the postcard image above that the original 1892 bridge had just four piers. We can see in the satellite image that those piers are much older than the ones added in 1943 because of the land and vegetation built up around the base of the piers. The photo below shows that the new piers that were added to halve the length of the new spans are simply bents using steel piles. The photo also captures one of the abandoned piers of the interurban bridge. The derelict US-41 bridge is visible under the cords of the railroad bridge.
 |
| Jann Mayer Photo via Bridge Hunter, License: Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) |
The "new" piers were having problems.
It looks like they did not have to do any repairs to the stone-cut piers, just notch them to make room for the deck girders of the 2015 replacement. But they had to replace the concrete caps of the bent piers. They did get rid of most of the vegetation around the old piers.
 |
Greg Mross posted
CNW 6916 brings an ore train over the ancient bridge crossing the Escanaba River (and E&LS) in Escanaba, MI in June of 1988. The SD40-2's replaced the Alco 628's and were quickly replaced by SD50/60's. Today, the CNW is gone, the bridge has been replaced, and the ore dock in Escanaba is no longer used. |
Eric Kurowski
posted twelve photos with the comment:
ESCANABA BRIDGE.ORIGINALLY built for much longer spans . The old spans were built for lighter trains but as iron ore tonnage grew in the region. The longer spans took a beating with the old wrought Iron Rivets. New short spans built heavily with harder rivits was needed to take the loads of heavy locomotives and short heavy ore cars that made the weight very compact. The need was met with theese spans.A very unique bridge indeed.
 |
1
[Note the wood piles driven in front of the old stone piers. Was this to reduce the flow around the old piers? Or to move the scouring from the base of the piers to the base of the piles? Neither John's photos or this Flickr photo catches a view of the upstream side of the new bridge so I don't know if they kept the wood piles in front of the old piers.] |
 |
| 2 |
 |
| 3 |
 |
| 4 |
 |
| 5 |
 |
| 6 |
 |
| 7 |
 |
| 8 |
 |
| 9 |
 |
| 10 |
 |
| 11 |
 |
| 12 |
Bing Maps not only shows the steel girders, it shows that the derelict bridge has been removed. This is the first time in my experience that Bing has had newer satellite images than Google.
 |
| When I tried creating a URL for this excerpt, Bing Map had a popup with "Creating the link ..." showing in a field during the entire time that I played a Freecell game. So I tried, but Bing failed. |
The replacement bridge.
 |
Brian Caswell Train Photography posted
A pair of CN SD60's lead a manifest train across the Escanaba River in Escanaba Michigan (Upper Penninsula) on a rainy Friday afternoon - Westbound / 10-6-23
J.B. Rail Photog shared |
No comments:
Post a Comment