Aban/ConRail/Pennsy Bridge over Indiana Harbor Canal in East Chicago, IN

(Bridge Hunter; Satellite)

Digitally Zoomed from the Following

This bridge looked so strange that it caught my eye even though it is in the background in the original photo below. I'm glad it did because I then realized it was the Pennsy bridge that is long gone. According to Bridge Hunter, it is a Rall type of bridge. I've seen Rall bridges before and not been able to figure out how they worked. I still can't figure out how they worked.

Minneapolis Northbay posted

Digitally Zoomed from the Following

East Chicago Indiana Public Library via BridgeHunter
[This emphasizes how narrow the opening was.]

Photo by Paul Geiger, 1976, looking West via BridgeHunter

Cleveland, OH Bridges

While trying to find this bridge at the Irishtown Bend, I decided it was time to geographically index what I have documented. This will be a living document because I'll try to remember to add links as I write more notes. I'm publishing now because I found this page: a history of the movable bridges

1953 Cleveland South Quadrangle @ 1:24,000 plus Paint

• 1, NS/NYC, lift; Iron Curtain
• 2, Aban/B&O, rolling; #464
• 3, road, lift; Willow Avenue Bridge
• 4, road, truss; Main Avenue
• 5, Aban/B&O, strauss; #463
• 6, road, bobtail; Center Street
• 7, duplicate, road, arch; Detroit-Superior
• 8, CUT viaduct
• 9, road, lift
• 10, Flats Industrial Railroad (FIR)/Big Four, lift
• 11, aban/(Erie+Big4) and Carter Road lift bridges
• 12, aban/road, lift
• 13, road, cantilever, lift; Hope Memorial and Eagle Ave.
• 14, lost/Big Four, Strauss
• 15, NS/NKP, lift
• 16, 3rd Street, lift
• 17
• 18
• 19
• 20, CSX/B&O, lift
• 21, industrial RR rolling
• 22
• 23
• 24
• 25
• 26
• 27
• 28
• A, road, arch; I-90
• B

I also accessed the 1994 topo to add the new road bridges A and B.

1994 Cleveland South Quadrangle @ 1:24,000

4, Main Avenue

OBLIQUE VIEW - Detroit Superior High Level Bridge, Cleveland, Cuyahoga County, OH
Library of Congress: HAER OHIO,18-CLEV,22--28 (CT)
7, Detroit Superior Bridge and High Road Bridges

HAER OHIO,18-CLEV,39--2 (CT)
13, Hope Memorial

A, I-90

This has also become a some generic notes about using the river for freight. Somewhere I have a time-lapse video of a boat going up the river. I wish I could find it so that I could move it to here.

Mike Delaney posted
Pontiac in the St. Mary's river. You could always tell the River runner boats that did the Cuyahoga or Calumet runs. Permanent mud ring around the hulls that never washed off. Not sure how much of the water in those rivers was even water.
Jim Luke: The Ford boats had that nasty stain from the Rouge back then too.
James Bouquard: Buffalo didn’t help her either.
Ernest Aleixandre

According to this article 90% of the Grand Calumet’s flow is effluent. https://www.wbez.org/.../014d0456-910c-4581-9839... [email wall]

3 photos of the Cadillac on the river

3 photos of the Buckeye on the river

3 photos of the Charles C. West on the river, https://www.greatlakesvesselhistory.com/.../w/west-charles-c

Brian R. Wroblewski: She was the last ship scrapped in Buffalo.

I was going to skip this one until I saw the comments about the ship's speed.

1 photo of Charles M. White on river

Mark Robinson: How fast was she?

Roger P. Hulett: People told me when I was on it that the White was faster than the Cliffs Victory, which was widely considered the fastest.

1 photo of Consumers Power on the river

3:17 time-lapse video of Sam Laud going upstream, docking, swinging out its boom and removing hatch covers

10:20 time-lapse video of an outbound freighter backing downstream  You can sometimes see some propwash from the bow thruster as they go around turns.

Rail to Water Dock on Calumet River

(see below for satellite information)

Mike Delaney posted
W.W. Holloway at rail to water on the Calumet River Chicago.
Robert Haller: Days of old, made many loads up to Valley Power Plant in Milwaukee.

Lou Gerad posted
Robert C. Norton at Rail to Water in South Chicago, 1974.
Dan Vandenberg: Great picture! In more recent years called KCBX. Now I'm wondering...is KCBX still shipping coal from there? Haven't seen much posted on boats loading there recently.

Comments on Lou's post

That would be part of the Rail to Water on the left and the 100th Street Bridge is in the air.

Mike Delaney posted
The International heading up river on the Calumet. Anybody who has heard the horn on this thing would know which one it was long before you saw it. I know I posted this shot before somewhere but it shows the care and pride these companies took in their vessels no matter how old. Both this and the Harvester were in mint and I mean mint and pristine condition. I wish I could have sailed in that tiny fleet. She was my favorite oldy and it was my pleasure to see her up close. I almost cry when I look at this shot. Boat gone, International Steel plant is gone.
[The steel plant it was headed to was Wisconsin Steel.]
Scott Liberty: Many people don’t know that the red and black IH logo is an abstract representation of a man on a tractor.
[Some comments include a couple more photos of the ship on the Calumet river.]

A facility to transload coal from rail to ships became obsolete when power plants switched from Illinois Basin coal to Power River Basin coal. Then local refineries switched to processing crude oil from Canadian tar sands. The residue product from that oil was petcoke instead of asphalt. So the facility switched to transloading petcoke to ships.

Satellite

But the dust blown off the piles was a serious pollution hazard, so then it became nothing.

Satellite, accessed Jan 2020

Mike Delaney posted
Calumet River Chicago.  Cliffs Victory on the left and some foreign rusted out crapcan on the right at Rail to Water.  This was during a brief iron miners strike so the Victory was layed up wet.  Lots of opinions on the Calumet, Rouge and Cuyahoga rivers as far as pollution goes.  We kicked up a dead body in this river with the bow thruster on the Grace heading for Interlake Iron farther up the river.  Didn't get to see it myself.  Did the same thing in the Cuyahoga on the Snyder Jr. backing into the turning basin coming from Republic Steel with the prop.  I did get to see that one.  The deceased was wearing a brown suite covered with crabs.  The Coast Guard came and picked up the body put him in a bodybag with his feet sticking out layed him on the rear platform on the outside back of the boat and down the river they went with several pleasure boats following taking pics.  Couple years later on the Ayers I was being lowered to the J&L steel dock on the Cuyahoga river, they lowered me to soon to fast and I ended up in the water up to my chest and was between the boat and the dock in between two giant earthmover tires hanging from the dock as the boat came in.  took four guys to pull me back up and out enough to climb onto the tire.  Everybody was heaving the blocks over and bedlam was going on the deck as man overboard was called.  I got back on board wearing about 20lbs of Cuyahoga river.  mate says you OK, I said great time for a swim.  Says go take a shower and wash your clothes your done for the night.  I would rather have swam in the Rouge.
[That is the 100th Street Bridge in the foreground.]

Today conveyor belts have developed well enough that the material is stored in piles. Before that, coal was stored in hopper cars. That is why most of the land back then was used for yard tracks. Then a lot of those tracks were removed to create land for the storage piles. You can see that evolution of hopper to pile storage in the still active coal docks in Newport News, VA.

Bob  Lalich commented on Nick Fry's share
Here is a Life magazine photo of the elevator taken in 1951.
Bob Lalich Dennis DeBruler - the hoppers are coal for Rail To Water.

Dennis DeBruler replied to Bob's comment
This photo shows the many tracks north of the elevator in this 1977 topo was used for storage. Are those iron ore cars? They look rather short.

John W. Barriger III National Railroad Library Flickr
[The south side of the yard and a ship in the background.]

John W. Barriger III National Railroad Library Flickr
[The north part of the yard and the Com Ed 100th St. Generating Station in the background.]

Bob Lalich Flickr, Aug 1984
BRC 100th st Yard
BRC TR4 set switches Rail To Water near 100th St, 8-84.

1937 Mississippi Lock and Dam #18 near Gladstone, IL

(HAER; John A Weeks III; Satellite)

I have visited this dam a couple of times in 2013. During the second visit, I saw an interesting tow lock through. I describe that operation in these notes. We met some people on the visitor's deck, but they were interested in the eagles in the area, not the tows.

USACE-locking

This dam is similar to some of the dams further up the river in that the concrete part across the main channel is a small part of the total length of the dam. There is a submersible dike across the wildlife refuge and transition dikes on either side of the river. The maximum lift is 9.8' with an average lift of 6.9'. It takes approximately 10 minutes to fill or empty the lock. "The dam is composed of 14 submersible Tainter gates (20 feet high by 60 feet long) and three submersible roller gates (20 feet high by 100 feet long). All gates submerge to a depth of eight feet....Dams 11 and 18 were the first in the Rock Island District to employ submersible, elliptical Tainter gates. They were also the first dams in the District to use submersible roller gates. Four sites were considered for Dam 18: just below the foot of Otter Island at mile 406.5, immediately above the old mouth of the Henderson River at mile 412.0, near Oquawka and at the current site. The selected site called for diversion of the Henderson River to a point below the dam. The final site was partially selected because the Iowa River Flint Creek Levee and Drainage District No. 16 drainage pumps discharged into the lower pool and were unaffected by raising of the water level for the upper pool" [USACE-fact-sheet, p1]

Satellite

JohnWeeks

Steve Vogt posted

HAER ILL,36-GLAST,1-
2. GENERAL VIEW OF DAM, DOWNSTREAM SIDE, LOOKING FROM GUIDEWALL - Mississippi River 9-Foot Channel Project, Lock & Dam No. 18, Upper Mississippi River, Gladstone, Henderson County, IL Photos from Survey HAER IL-29

HAER ILL,36-GLAST,1-
3. GENERAL VIEW OF LOCK, DOWNSTREAM SIDE, LOOKING FROM GUIDEWALL

HAER ILL,36-GLAST,1-
7. DETAIL VIEW OF DAM, SHOWING INTERIOR OF PIER HOUSE, LOOKING DOWNSTREAM

HAER ILL,36-GLAST,1-, cropped
9. PROGRESS ON PIERS. VIEW TOWARD IOWA SNORE FROM RIVER WALL (September 1936) 

I'm saving this one because it explains some new terminology.

RiverWorks Discovery posted

Knock out Double Lock at Lock 18 on the Upper Miss

A double lockage with barges in the first cut and only the tow boat in the second cut is called a knockout double. The boat is unfaced from the tow (knocked out of tow) to allow the 600' tow to lock thru. 

It can also be called a "quick double" since facing the boat back up to the tow is considerably quicker than re-laying the wires at a barge to barge coupling.

Here we see Marquette Transportation's M/V Theresa L. Wood southbound with 8 loads at Lock 18 on the Upper Mississippi River mm 410. 

USACE's M/V Quincy is along with a gate lift/maintenance crane and support barges are tied off on the outer intermediate wall.

Courtesy of Capt John Vaughn.

Chase Gordon: First barge of the season. [Mar 9, 2022]

CSX/(ACL+SCL) Bridge over St. Johns River (Lake Montroe) at Sanford, FL

(Bridge Hunter; Historic Bridges; Satellite)

Chris Ness posted

Sanford, FL ACL Drawbridge

Still active after all the years. I am told that it has as many as nine openings a day.

09/10

Dennis DeBruler

Thanks for contributing your photo to Bridge Hunter. According to the facts on that page, this bridge was used by the SCL as well as the ACL. Of course, in either case it is now a CSX bridge.

https://bridgehunter.com/fl/seminole/csxt-lake-monroe/

DS Hogan: Do they man all these railroad drawbridges? 24-7? How are they staffed?
Dennis DeBruler

Historic Bridges states:

"This railroad bascule bridge continues to carry many trains and also operates frequently for boats."

So it is probably staffed.

https://historicbridges.org/bridges/browser/?bridgebrowser=florida/stjohnslakemonroerr/

Dennis DeBruler commented on DS Hogan's comment

DS Hogan There is a human in the loop. But where that person sits can vary. In the case of RR bridges, it would be a railroad employee. I don't know about this Florida bridge, but some examples of bridge control are:

- For Amtrak's South Branch Bridge, call a phone number and it is operated remotely using multiple cameras.

41°51'21.0"N 87°38'13.2"W

- I can think of several lift bridges in the Chicagoland area where the conductor gets out and operates it. These bridges are normally open. I think the CSX/Rock Island bridge in Joliet is one of them.

41°31'14.9"N 88°05'16.5"W

- I think the NS/NYC Hick tower is still staffed (not manned) 24/7.

41°39'35.6"N 87°27'06.6"W

- The BNSF/SantaFe bridge across the Sanitary Canal is an example of a bridge that DOES NOT MOVE for marine traffic. I've watched them pump a lot of water into one end of a barge to get the load low enough to go under that bridge.

41°40'45.0"N 87°59'59.8"W

The towboats in Chicagoland have retractable pilot houses because several of the movable bridges no longer move.

Dennis DeBruler commented on DS Hogan's comment

DS Hogan I noticed a marina and houses that have water for their alley are upstream. And the satellite caught the bridge in the closed position. So it is probably staffed. I'm curious if it staffed 24/7 or only during the day.

28°50'20.4"N 81°20'01.8"W

Steven J. Brown posted
Amtrak Silver Star #91 crosses the St Johns River at Lake Monroe, Florida - January 25, 2022.
Steven J. Brown shared

WWII Navy Task Force 38

I don't do too many "one photo" posts. But I think this photo is worth it. I knew the US built a lot of ships for WWII. This photo helps me better comprehend the size of that war effort.

[Unfortunately, I forgot to record the source Facebook post.]

The US couldn't do this wartime construction again because we have lost too many of the industries needed to build big ships. Not only can China make 10 times more steel than we can, we can't build more steel mills. We have lost the companies like Mesta that make the machines that went into the mills. And we have lost companies like Verson Allsteel Press Co. that made the machines that formed steel into useful products. But it may not matter that the US can no longer tool up for a war effort because the next war may be fought in cyberspace rather than physical space. The loss of semiconductor manufacturing concerns me more than the loss of steel manufacturing.

Video about the evolution of aircraft carriers

(UP+Amtrak)/Southern Pacific Bridge over I-80 in Auburn, CA (BoB)

(Bridge Hunter; 3D Satellite)

BoB = Bridge on Bridge so that later I can find these more easily.

Jeff Lewis posted two photos with the comment:

How about a bridge supporting a bridge? Specifically a Pratt riveted deck truss supporting deck plate girder spans with deck plate girder trestle approaches? Meet the Auburn Ravine Bridge over Interstate 80 in Auburn, CA. The original deck plate girder bridge was built in 1912. I can't find a date when it was modified. Any info would be appreciated.

Aerial drone image ©Brad Fick, August 22, 2021

Historic image Brad Fick collection.

Brian Luna: It was modified in the 50s to accommodate I 80.

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Facebook comments
Auburn Trestle
California Trestles
Chicago "L"

I don't care about the train, but I do care about the bridge.

River Rail Photo posted
Above It All In Auburn. Amtrak Train 5 (California Zephyr) had an extra and colorful addition to the head end, seen passing over Interstate 80 in Auburn, California on the afternoon of Friday, March 25, 2022. AMTK 90221 (F40NPCU, Salutes Out Veterans, formerly AMTK 221, F40PH) is 3rd out, behind P42DCs 202 and 45. NPCU means "Non Powered Cab Unit", as this former engine now only functions as a cab control car. It was with the consist from Chciago, Ilinois to Emeryville, California. The Placer County Museums/historic Auburn Courthouse is seen on the right of the photo, with its dome rising above the Auburn Historic District.
Flickr: https://flic.kr/p/2naLzWT

MWRD: Lemont Water Reclamation Plant (WRP)

(Satellite)

MWRD posted ten photos with the comment:

It was a little hot and humid this morning at Lemont Water Reclamation Plant but we were excited to learn about our new energy-efficient turbo blower, vortex separator and wet weather facility and other technology working diligently to treat wastewater for Lemont residents and protect the Chicago Sanitary and Ship Canal from pollution.

Today MWRD Commissioner Eira L. Corral Sepúlveda and staff members Julie Reschke and Yusuf Vidal and Justin Hart from the office of Commissioner Debra Shore were led on a tour by Lemont and Calumet engineers and treatment plant operators to provide a first hand account of the critical work Lemont WRP performs to transform up 4 million gallons of wastewater and stormwater into clean water.

Our new turbo blower at Lemont WRP will save nearly 400,000 kilowatt-hours per year for a savings of $27,613 per year. The blower produces twice as much capacity as the previous three centrifugal blowers and allows our operators to better adjust the air supplied to the treatment process and provide accurate dissolved oxygen levels in the tanks. The wet weather facility springs into action during rain events to mitigate combined sewer overflows.

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[The BNSF/SantaFe bobtail bridge is in the background.]

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