BNSF/CB&Q and Road Bridges over the Missouri River at Rulo, NE

1887 CB&Q: (Bridge Hunter; HAER; Engineer's Report)
1977 BN: (Bridge Hunter; Satellite)
1938 Turss: (Bridge Hunter)
2013 UCEB: (Satellite)  UCEB = Ugly Concrete Eyesore Bridge

I'm used to seeing Whipple trusses on the C&NW. But this is the first one I remember seeing on the CB&Q.

HAER NEB,74-RULO,1--10

HAER NEB,74-RULO,1--8
[HAER also has several construction photos of the piers.]

Engineer's Report, p35

It looks like some of the piers go down to just blue clay. But they were good enough that the 1977 rebuild reused them.

Engineer's Report, p37

Engineer's Report, p57

Engineer's Report, p59

Engineer's Report, p61

I was surprised when I saw the rebuilt date of the railroad bridge was in the second half of the 20th Century. It is not unusual for bridges built in the beginning of the 20th Century to last 100 years. In fact, it would be unusual for one of those truss bridges to not last 100 years because the railroads generally maintain their bridges. But it is unusual for a bridge built in the 1800s to last almost 100 years because they were generally rebuilt at the beginning of the 20th Century when steam locomotives started getting a lot bigger after air brakes became common. (You don't need more horsepower for a train that is too heavy for the brakes to stop.) The bridges needed to be stronger not only to handle the increased weight but also the increased impact forces of a steam locomotive.

Street View

The comments on the following post explain why the Whipple trusses lasted so long. This was evidently just a branch BN/CB&Q route until the EPA sulfur regulations caused the Midwest power plants to switch from Illinois Basin coal to Powder River Valley Coal rather than install sulfur scrubbers. I think the 1970s was also when rotary dump high-walled gondola cars and unit trains were developed.

Samuel Brodersen posted
Another load of Powder River coal crosses the Missouri River into Missouri. The small town of Rulo, NE is seen in the background.
Vernon Lovelady
A lot of coal comes down that line. We use to have property at Big Lake about 4 miles from the river. Seen lots of trains threw there.

When I looked at the satellite images, I noticed that the bridges had approaches across a lot of land on both sides. These photos confirm that the approaches cross flood plains. In the following photo we see that the land is covered all the way to these storage units. This was the 2011 flood. I wonder how deep the water was here during the 2019 floods.

Ben Tate photo during flood of Oct 2012 via Bridge Hunter

some comments indicate that this reoad bridge shows up in the movie Paper Moon, a storm chasers episode on the Discovery Channel and something else that I now can't find.

Ben Tate photo via Bridge Hunter

Jason Smith photo via Bridge Hunter
[A comment indicates it was just 20' wide. I'll bet modern combines and tractors with dual tires had a rather tight fit on that bridge. But 20' is plenty wide for a trail. Did the Coast Guard force Nebraska to get rid of this bridge also? Some comments point out that knee bracings were removed to provide more clearance for trucks. That was an example of how these old truss bridges were over engineered.]

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The new bridge cost $25.7m and took three years to build. Part of that construction time was a work stoppage caused by the 2011 flood. [KMAland]

Street View

Traffic to this bridge was closed twice in 2019 because of flooding on US-159. [NewsChannelNebraska]

MoDOT photo (source)