B&O, Big4 and Pennsy Bridges over Sandusky River in Tiffin, OH

All: (Satellite, a log jam on the south side of the center pier is a reminder that the Sandusky flows North to Lake Erie.)

Normally, I would pass up a steel girder bridge over a relatively narrow river, but there is so much railroad history in this photo that I decided to dig deeper.

MP Rail Photography posted

I158 heads eastbound on the Willard Subdivision as it crosses the Sandusky River in Tiffin, Ohio. Here the three bridges that once served three of the major eastern railroads can be see. The Pennsylvania RR, B&O and New York Central all crossed the river at this point.

May 22, 2022

Tiffin, Ohio

Power:

CSX 463 - AC44CW

CSX GEVO

MP Rail Photography shared

Scott Perry commented on MP Rail's post

So here is the original bridges over the sandusky river.. looking west. So Mad River Bridge on left(NYC/Big 4), B&O, PRR 1913. When the bridges were replaced(old were iron) the PRR pier was built for double track that didn't happen.

Pic from bridgehunters.com

[Bridgehunters should not be plural. This photo appears in BridgeHunter-B&O-1883, BridgeHunter-PRR and BridgeHunter-Big4]

This topo map excerpt was designed to include the railroad names. The Big4 was in the northeast and southwest quadrants while the Pennsy was in the northwest and southeast quadrants. So they had to cross each other and the B&O as they went through town. So did they cross east or west of the river because that would determine the order of the bridges on the river.

1960 Tiffin South Quad @ 1:24,000

I zoomed in to show that they crossed east of the river. Thus Scott's comment is correct and some of the descriptions in Bridge Hunter posts are not correct.

1960 Tiffin South Quad @ 1:24,000

MP Rail Photography posted
A sun bleached KCS ES44AC leads I66 eastbound on the B&O, seen here crossing the Sandusky River in Tiffin. August 11, 2024 Tiffin, Ohio Power: KCS 4705 - ES44AC James Evans: With the Big Four bridge on the left and the Pennsylvania bridge on the right. The B&O crossed both roads at grade just east of the Sandusky River. The diamond were moveable point frogs at PRR manned Tiffin Tower.

Since I see only two trusses, this photo must be older than the 1913 triple-truss photo shown above. So which railroad is missing? Since this was B&O's mainline to Chicago, I'm going to assume it was old enough to have a bridge there. And Tom Weisenauer commented on MP Rail's post that the Mad River and Lake Erie Railroad had a bridge here back in the 1830s. That railroad became part of the Big Four. So the Pennsy route must have been built after this photo was taken.

ColumbusLibrary via BridgeHunter-Big4, License: Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial (CC BY-NC)
View of Sandusky River, North from Washington Street, Tiffin, Ohio

Today's view north from Washington Street.

Street View

CSX now owns the B&O. The Big4 is abandoned. The Pennsy is abandoned to the southeast, and it is now owned by Northern Ohio & Western (NOW) to the northwest.