1941 KCS Bridge over Neches River at Beaumont, TX

?: (Bridge Hunter)

1941: (Bridge Hunter; no Historic Bridges; 3D Satellite)

BNSF, UP and Amtrak also use this KCS bridge.

Patrick Feller Flickr via BridgeHunter-1941, License: Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY)
Miss Eliza, Neches River, Beaumont, Texas 1302071335
[Patrick also has photos in BridgeHunter-1941 with trains crossing the bridge.]

 

Cleveland State University Library Photograph Collection via BridgeHunter-1941

TxDOT
It is a single-track bridge with a 20mph restriction. The lift span is 239' with a 200' channel. The vertical clearance is 13' when closed and 147' when open.
-- Bridge is opened 231 times per year
-- Second most important rail bottleneck in Texas
[I'm shocked by the number of openings per year I could not find much shipping activity upstream on a satellite image. There were no ships and very few docks. (There is a lot downstream of the bridge.) Then I found a marina for pleasure boats. I wonder what the vertical clearance is when it is closed.]

This is the post that motivated researching this bridge because the towers struck me as rather tall. When I remembered that a bridge in Beaumont may have to accommodate ocean-going ships, I decided to research this bridge.

Steven J. Brown posted
Union Pacific and Kansas City Southern trains meet in Beaumont, Texas - April 17, 2021.
Dennis DeBruler

Judging by the height of the bridge's towers in the background, it was built for ocean-going ships.

https://bridgehunter.com/tx/jefferson/neches-river-lift/

Jonathan Konopka posted
A KCS train heading across the Neches River Lift Bridge in Beaumont, TX. Photo credit belongs to Steve Carter.

As we would expect, this lift bridge replaced a swing bridge.

DeGolyer Library, Southern Methodist University via Flickr via BridgeHunter-?
A comment indicates that UP has rights because this bridge used to carry Missouri Pacific as well as KCS.