1840+1893 Trail/NS/(Southern+L&N) Bridge over Tennessee River at Florence, AL

(Bridge Hunter; Historic Bridges; HAER; Satellite)

The piers may date back to 1840. They are certainly older than 1893. 1893 is when the new steel trusses were built because a train wreck took out both the rail (upper) and wagon (lower) decks in 1892. In 1963 they replaced the swing span with a lift span. In 1993, Norfolk Southern moved this lift span to their Wabash bridge over the Mississippi River at Hannibal, MO and gave the rest of the bridge to a preservation organization, the Old Railroad Bridge.

Kevin Lackey posted
The Robin with 18 loads at Wilson Dam on the Tenn River
[This tow will go through the 1924 Lock #1 one barge at a time.]

The plaques posted on the trail by the Old Railroad Bridge are the best (concise) history I have come across. It is too bad that I could not find this text on their web site.

George Dawson, Apr 2021

George Dawson, Apr 2021

This 1936 topo map indicates that both Southern and L&N used the bridge.

1936 Florence Quadrangle @ 1:24,000

When they built the new 110' x 600' x 100' lock in 1959, they also built a wider canal that took some of the bend out of the downstream entrance and they forced the replacement of the swing span with a lift span by 1963. I got the information that L&N shared this bridge with Southern from this topo map.

1957 Florence Quad @ 24,000

HAER AL-204-5
5. Lift span, looking southeast - Tennessee River Railroad Bridge, Spanning Tennessee River at Alabama Highway 43, Florence, Lauderdale County, AL

The lower deck is now a trail. Given the absence of a lift span, the railroad is obviously abandoned.

Street View, Oct 2022

HAER AL-204-7
7. South approach, looking north

James Neal Jeter posted
I took this photo in March of 1982. Southern Railway switcher with train headed south from Florence across the bridge on the Tennessee River to Sheffield.
James Neal Jeter: According to the Old Railroad Bridge website trains ran on the bridge until 1988 and NS removed the lift span in the spring of 1992 and relocated it to Hannibal MO.

Ghost Rails and Forgotten Highways posted

In the spring of 1992, a crew took a 406-foot steel lift span off the Tennessee River at Florence, Alabama, and floated it away. It did not go to a scrapyard. It went north and was set into the Wabash Bridge at Hannibal, Missouri, where Norfolk Southern freight still crosses the Mississippi River on it. The span was thirty years old. The railroad it had been built for was already dead — the Interstate Commerce Commission approved abandonment of 2.7 miles of track, the bridge included, on September 6, 1988. The span outlived its own route. The piers it once sat between are still standing in the river in Alabama.

The crossing started as a wagon bridge. Alabama's legislature chartered the Florence Bridge Company in 1832, and a toll bridge opened in 1840. Storms wrecked it twice. In 1858 the Memphis and Charleston Railroad rebuilt it as a double-decker — trains on the upper deck, paying wagons on the lower. The Memphis and Charleston had finished its 311-mile main line from Memphis to Stevenson the year before, the first railroad to tie the Atlantic seaboard to the Mississippi River. That main line ran along the south bank through Tuscumbia. The Florence bridge was the stub that connected the town on the north bank into it. The Civil War destroyed the superstructure. Both decks were back in service by 1870.

The bridge's real business arrived in 1887, when the Nashville, Florence and Sheffield Railroad reached Florence from the north and signed a joint-use agreement on August 17 of that year. That road became part of the Louisville and Nashville. For a century the bridge existed so two railroads could hand traffic across the water. Detroit Bridge and Iron Works replaced the superstructure in 1893-95. Streetcars ran across it from 1904 to 1933. Tolls ended when the O'Neal Bridge opened in 1939. In 1962 the Tennessee Valley Authority's navigation clearances forced out the old turn span, and the 406-foot lift went in — a $3.5 million job, of which Southern Railway paid $135,000.

Then the traffic stopped. On April 10, 1986, the L&N cancelled the operating agreement and quit the bridge. Without the connection from the north, Southern Railway had no reason to keep a manned lift span over a navigable river. It petitioned the ICC on August 3, 1988, and the abandonment was granted a month later. A Section 106 review required the approach spans be left intact, and they were. The lift went to Missouri; the rest went to a nonprofit, the Old Railroad Bridge Company. Today 1,560 feet of it is a public walkway running from the Sheffield side toward Patton Island, stopping over open water short of Florence. It was listed on the National Register on May 30, 2024.

If you crossed this bridge before 1988 — on a train, on foot, or working either end of it — what do you remember about the lift span going up?

The Hannibal swap was done in three days, scheduled that tight to keep the Mississippi open to barge traffic. The span the Florence lift replaced there was a 1913 swing span with a 159-foot navigation opening; the lift gives 320 feet. The last full federal record of the Alabama bridge is HAER AL-204 — ten photographs shot by Sam Buchanan on July 11, 1989, about ten months after the ICC signed the abandonment.

"The surviving spans are rare double-deck, pin-connected Warren truss spans." A swing span was replaced by a lift span in 1962. [HistoricBridges]

HAER AL-204-4
4. Lift span, looking east

I labeled these notes "bridgeRare" because Nathan Holth (Historic Bridges) said so. Specifically: "the surviving spans are rare double-deck, pin-connected Warren truss spans." I don't think double-deck bridges were rare back then because an accommodation for wagon traffic was typically included when a railroad bridge was the first bridge across a major body of water. Although it was more typical to add the wagon decks on the sides rather than underneath. I think what is rare is "pin-connected Warren" trusses. Pin-connected is an old truss construction technique whereas Warren trusses are a relatively new truss design. Most pin-connected trusses used the Pratt design. This photo gives us a good view of the truss and its pin connections as well as the cut-stone piers.

Brian Cameron, Jun 2018

More evidence that 2019 was very wet in the US. Note that the water is at the top of the dolphins that are downriver from the end of the bridge.

Pine Grove Church of God, Mar 2019

This shows that when the water is near the top of the dolphins, it is also near the top of the crossover of a main pier (upper-right corner) for the O'Neal Bridge.

Toni Roxane Barnes, Feb 2019

This photo confirms that we can normally see much more of the dolphins than just the plants growing out the top of them. The bridge on the left is the O'Neal Bridge.

Megan Thornton, Oct 2020

 

Tony Wimpee posted
Old Railroad Bridge on the Tennessee River between Sheffield and Florence Alabama.
Lequory Quantez: Secession Former L&N bridge. The rest of the span was removed and used elsewhere in the late 90's/early 2000's. Goes for a few miles and terminates at the former Southern yard.
Tim Shanahan shared

Another view that includes the dolphins. To the left of the dolphins is the Florence Canal that goes to the Wilson Locks.

Street View

This photo shows that some of the cut-stone piers have had extensive repairs, but not all of them. I didn't notice the concrete coated piers in the other photos.

Jay Patterson, Aug 2020

2 of the photos posted by Rick L. Singleton with the comment:

The lift part of the bridge was removed in the 1970’s and is now serving as a crossing on the Mississippi River.

Cars crossed the river on the lower deck.

Tim Shanahan shared

a

b

Toney Wimpee posted two photos with the comment: "Oldest major bridge in Alabama and between Florence and Sheffield.  Trolleys and trains on top and wagons and cars on the bottom."

Tim Shanahan shared

1

2, cropped