Wednesday, July 20, 2022

1931 NS/N&W/Virginian (VGN) Bridge over Kanawha River at Deepwater, WV

(Bridge Hunter; no Historic Bridges; B&T; Satellite)

2015 Mike Flickr via BridgeHunter, License: Creative Commons Attribution-Share-Alike (CC BY-SA)

Crossing the Kanawha River

The Virginian Railway bridge at Deepwater, West Virginia.


Photo from WVU West Virginia & Regional History via BridgeHunter
[BridgeHunter's caption is "1st train across new bridge in 1915," but I read a date of Mar 15, 1931.
Note that we can see that the falsework under the truss has yet to be removed.]
Vickie Thomas posted
Crossing the New River in 1931. [Comments correct the river as Kanawha.]
Credit: WVRHC
Randall Hampton shared
The end of the Virginian, at Deepwater WV
Troy Nolen: Just for the record, this is not Deepwater, WV.
Deepwater is on the other side of the river, this is technically Alloy, WV.
The VGN interchanged with the C&O at Deepwater, and with the NYC at Alloy
So what this is, is a VGN 2-6-6-6 about to interchange a train to the NYC at Alloy
Randall Hampton: Looks like there's some kind of temporary wooden structure out in the water on the far side, from the construction project. I thought it might be trees in high water until I noticed some cross braces up high.
Dennis DeBruler: Randall Hampton I had noticed that also. They ran the "first train" while the falsework used to build the truss was still in place.

1 of 4 photos posted by Bridges & Tunnels with Sherman Cahal
The construction of the Deepwater Railroad Bridge over the Kanawha River in Deepwater, West Virginia was one of the Virginian Railway's (VGN) more significant legal battles.
The VGN had long sought an outlet for coal mined in West Virginia and Virginia with ports along Lake Erie in Ohio and at one point had acquired land along the Great Lakes for a terminal. Those plans never materialized, as did plans to acquire or lease the Kanawha & Michigan Railroad (K&M) and other railways.
After the conclusion of World War I, the VGN sought a physical connection with the K&M, now a subsidiary of the New York Central Railroad (NYC), at Deepwater so that it could interchange traffic but it faced opposition from the C&O which questioned its competitor’s authority to build that link. The difficulty for the VGN was that the only connections the VGN had to the west were the C&O and Norfolk & Western Railway, both of which were competitors with it on eastbound traffic from Deepwater to Hampton Roads. The connection with the NYC would give the VGN a non-competitive route to the west. The C&O was also worried that the VGN would merge into the NYC which was proposed at that time.
In 1930, the Interstate Commerce Commission ruled in favor of the VGN. The railroad contracted with the Virginia Bridge & Iron Company to construct a combination Warren through truss and plate girder crossing of the Kanawha which was opened to traffic in March 1931.
Check out more photos and history of this graceful bridge at


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