W&LE = Wheeling & Lake Erie Railway is on a contemporary map and Bridge Hunter shows a 1990 date for WLE.
Pittsburgh & West Virginia is on a 1954 topo map. Pennsy was on the south shore and Pittsburgh & Lake Erie was on the north shore.
N&W is on 1969 and 1979 topo maps.
The 1993 cartographer did not bother to label the route over the bridge. Newer maps are not necessarily better.
HistoricBridges confirms that K-truss bridges are rare in PA.
Bridge Hunter comments indicate the bridge was built with tracks on both levels, but only the upper level was used.
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| Evan T Williams II posted Speers, Pa. Taken from upper Speers. K Truss bridge crossing the Monongahela River. Built 1930. Active, but not super active. It's a rare sight to catch a train, but I hear they go by one a day. I 70 car bridge in the background. |
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| Tyler Canzonieri posted W&LE Trestle. Speers, Pennsylvania. Douglas Long: The Norfolk Southern spun off the the W&LE because as a class 1 railroad, they would have had to fix the bridges. As a a class II regional railroad the W&LE was able to sidestep the governments regulation. |
The blue arch-looking bridge is the I-70 Belle Vernon Bridge.
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| Rust Belt Railroading posted WLE 617 crossing the Speers Viaduct. |
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| Rust Belt Railroading posted Dennis DeBruler: The south approach of the Speers Viaduct. https://www.google.com/.../@40.1267785.../data=!3m1!1e3... |
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| Engineering Record, p2 via HistoricBridges |
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| jmohney, this photo has been moved to "1951,1993 I-70 Belle Vernon Bridge." [This web page as some more bridge photos.] |
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| Shane Welling posted I'm sure a lot of people know about this bridge that Wheeling and Lake Erie uses, spanning the Monongahela river from Speers to Belle Vernon. Taken by me on August 22nd, 2021 David Coldren: Oh, yeah we do. Except when we were younger it was part of the Alphabet Route under N&W (or P&WV). Always hoped we’d catch an Alphajet on the bridge when we were crossing the Mon on I-70. Sometimes we did. [A comment explains that the trestle across the bottom is a W&LE branch that goes to a coke plant.] |
Checking out the trestle as well as the main bridge.
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| Street View Dennis DeBruler commented on Shane's post That trestle that goes down to the plant is rather impressive in its own right. |
A photo from that trestle?
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Train traveling over a railroad bridge over the Monongahela River at Monessen, Westmoreland county in 1966. (Photo from William McCloskey via https://www.facebook.com/Greater-Monessen-Historical-Society-120928317960725/) Randy Ross: Probably a Southern Railways Steam Excursion. Note the auxiliary tender. Looks like #4501 which was being used in 1966. |
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| Street View Dennis DeBruler commented on Shane's post The industrial spur trestle has a design that I've never seen before. Normally the girders across the top of a tower are shorter than the girders between towers. But in this case, the towers are extra wide and use the same length girders. Then I noticed that they use just a bent between between the larger than normal towers. |
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| Charlie Easton commented on a post The P&WV built this bridge with the idea of leasing the lower level sometime in the future. But that never happened. Photo from Classic Trains. Charlie Easton posted It wasn't uncommon for railroads to build bridges designed for two tracks and only adding one at the onset. The look was to the future. I used to look out my condo window at the Nickel Plate bridge over the Rocky River by the Lake Erie shoreline. It was designed for two lines and has only one. Perhaps a little rarer and a little more interesting from an engineering standpoint would be a bridge designed for two levels of tracks. The Pittsburgh and West Virginia built such a bridge hoping for a lease of the lower passage. Here's a shot of the bridge with one of their 2-6-6-4s with the really compact wheel base for the size of the locomotive. Reportedly done because of the sawtooth route this section of the Alphabet Route followed through western PA, the WV Panhandle, and a short stint into Ohio. [Charile's description of "the Nickel Plate bridge over the Rocky River by the Lake Erie shoreline" would be this bridge, but the comments identified it as a bridge in Belle Vernon, PA.] |
Thomas Dorman posted two photos with the comment: "Triple crossing at Belle Vernon, Pennsylvania. These three tracks miss crossing directly over each other by about 60 feet. The ground-level track is former Pittsburgh McKeesport & Youghiogheny Railroad, now CSX; the middle level is Monessen-Southwestern Railway; and the upper level is a former Pittsburgh & West Virginia Railway, now Wheeling & Lake Erie, bridge across the Monongahela River. It is west of the Main Street exit, Exit 41, from I-70. 26 March 2022."
Brandon Lee: That last one is backwards. It's W&LE now it was P&WV.
Ted Gregory: The triple crossing in Richmond is similar in that they miss crossing at the same location within 100 ft or so.
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| Michael Froio Photography posted Speers Railroad bridge crossing the Monongahela River. Completed in 1931and built by American Bridge for the Pittsburgh & West Virginia Railroad the Speers bridge is unique for its K-truss design, a design not typically utilized outside of the Great Plains. Measuring 2900’ in length, it was originally designed to carry two tracks, one on top chord of the truss, and a second on the lower chord which was never completed. On the north side of the Mon, a secondary steel trestle arrangement brings a branch off the mainline down to the riverside Gibsonton terminal, evident by the structure running parallel to the bank of the river in the far side of this view. Don Lee: The Connellsville Extension of the PWV was one of the newest rail lines in the eastern US. Since by the 1930s all of the river grades east from Pittsburgh were already occupied by other railroads, the PWV had no choice but to tunnel, fill or bridge the higher ground to reach the Western Maryland Railroad at Connellsville, PA. For many years this was part of the famous Alphabet Route from Chicago to New York: NKP-WLE-PWV-WM-RDG-CNJ. The lower trestle on the far side of the river was the Monessen Southwestern, a steel mill common carrier railroad owned by Wheeling-Pittsburgh Steel that was built to interchange steel products with the PWV at Monessen. The steel mill is long gone but its coke works remain to manufacture coke for mills far from the area. Both railroads are now operated by the new Wheeling & Lake Erie. The former PWV was part of my territory during my time as a Trainmaster with the Norfolk & Western. Michael Froio Photography: Don thank you for this, I admittedly don’t know a whole lot about the history of this road. But being down there and following the line a bit left the impression that it was one hell of an engineering fete! Don Lee: Mike, you are correct about this being an engineering fete. As I recall in the 112 miles of the PWV, there are 11 tunnels, the longest at Greentree near Pittsburgh which is about a mile long. There are about 14 miles of track on bridges or viaducts. My opinion is that the portion from Speer to Connellsville might be one of the most scenic rail lines in the east. The Wikipedia entry for the Pittsburgh & West Virginia is a fairly accurate history from what I can see. The 1931 extension was from Mifflin Jct. to Connellsville. Mike Froio shared Mike Froio shared |
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| Dennis DeBruler commented on Mike's share That is a nice view of the industrial spur trestle. I had noticed before that it has the unusual design of placing a bent between each tower. This allows them to use the same length girders between towers as they do across the towers. https://www.google.com/.../data=!3m6!1e1!3m4... |
I had not noticed the triple crossing before. But, unlike Richmond, these are not all Class I railroads.
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| Tom Wilson posted P&WV? N&W top level, Monessen Southwestern middle level, P&LE ground level, Monessen Pa, Bridge crosses the Mon River. |
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| Dennis DeBruler commented on Tom's post Where were these bridges? I thought Richmond, VA, was the only town that had a triple crossing. 1954 Donora and Monongahela Quads @ 24,000. Maps from 1969 looked the same except the names of the railroads changed. Jimmy Braum: Dennis DeBruler they still exist and are in service by the Wheeling and Lake Erie. Charles Tapper: Dennis DeBruler The top deck is the east end of P&WV’s long high level crossing of the Monongahela that features 3 massive K truss spans. The middle level is the Monessen Southwestern’s connecting trestlework to track that accessed slag dumps and a connection to the P&WV. It also used to connect to the lower deck of the main K truss spans, because when it was built the MSW was planning to use this lower deck to bridge the Monongahela to reach the Allenport rolling mills. Monessen was sending slabs by barge, and this would have permitted hot slabs and no trans-loading. I guess the Great Depression nixed that (P&WV started their Connellsville extension in 1929/1930). The passenger train was on the P&LE, probably an excursion by an ex-Reading T-1? I remember going to Brownsville in 1977 and was surprised to see one there, 2102 shttps://maps.app.goo.gl/QELgni27acbtY2ia9itting there. |
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| Dennis DeBruler commented on Charles' comment Thanks. The "K-truss spans" was the clue that allowed me to find this crossing. https://maps.app.goo.gl/QELgni27acbtY2ia9 |
Uncles would repeatedly Juno off top trestle into river
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