Sunday, July 3, 2022

1962 Canal (Burlington Bay) Lift and 1958,1988 James Allan Skyway Bridges in Hamilton, ON

Skyway: (Historic Bridges; 3D Satellite)

Street View
 
Street View

Before the lift bridge was built.
Vintage Hamilton posted
A pair of bascule lift bridges on the beach strip carried all traffic for the QEW over the ship canal. The north bascule was struck late April 1952 by the W. E. Fitzgerald (no not the one of song fame) and was destroyed. A quick solution to the traffic ills was a temporary bridge Built from the location of north span, to the centre divider in the canal a "bailey" type bridge was used. The bridge blocked shipping traffic on the inbound side of the canal so all traffic had to use the outbound side. The open area on the left is where the Burlington Skyway would later be erected to become the primary passage over the canal. Picture by the Toronto Star Image courtesy of the Toronto Library
Douglas Butler shared
Vintage Hamilton: Burlington Skyway Strauss Bascule Bridge later was double leaf added then replaced with a vertical lift bridge is located in Hamilton, ON Canada.

BORIS RUGHAS, Aug 2021
 
Kevin Blair posted
Burlington Bridge
 
Julie Waller Fletcher posted
Let's play bridge
Paul Blackwood: Burlington Bay lift bridge

1 of  16 photos posted by Bill Salton
Dredging flotilla leaving Hamilton Harbour with tugs Lac Vancouver, Whitby, and Robinson Bay.

BridgeHunter-skyway points out that the floor supports are trusses rather than the usual rolled or built-up I-beams. The channel span is 495' (151m).
Street View

The original crossing of the harbor canal was a swing bridge. "In 1922, this was replaced by a single leaf Strauss heel-trunnion type bascule. An interesting story about this bridge is that in 1931 the canal was widened, and to accommodate this, a second bascule bridge was added at the other side of the canal to form a double leaf bascule bridge. On April 29, 1952, the freighter W. E. Fitzgerald collided with and destroyed one of the spans, which led to the design and construction of the existing lift bridge....The lift bridge was the longest and heaviest in Canada when completed. The lift span weight when completed was 2,100 tons. The bridge was designed for a single railway track of the Hamilton-Northwestern railway as well as a two lane roadway. In 1982, the tracks were removed, and the roadway was widened. The current weight of the lift span is 2200 tons (2000 tonnes). The bridge has a vertical lift capacity of of 110 feet (33.5 meters)." [HistoricBridges-lift]

The concrete bridge was added in 1985 [dbpedia] which allowed the 1958 bridge to be rehabilitated without reducing the traffic flow and then doubling the traffic capacity when the rehabilitation was completed. It carries the Queen Elizabeth Way (QEW) that connects Toronto, CA, with Niagara Falls, Fort Erie and the USA. I noticed these two bridges about a week ago when I studied the Garden State Skyway.

Street View

This is the post that motivated this research. Historic Bridges considers the 1985 bridge to be ugly. I don't think all concrete bridges are ugly. 
Neil Pichora posted
Federal St. Laurent inbound to the harbor today.
 
1 of 3 photos posted by Neil Pichora

Video
"This was the first large-scale application of cast-in-place prestressed concrete segmental construction in Ontario." [And you thought I had an adjective heavy writing style.]

Once the main pier was built using cranes, two form travelers were used to cantilever from that pier.
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Post-stress tensioning was used in several dimensions. This diagram shows the tendons used in the longitudinal dimension. If I caught an earlier statement in the video correctly, they had to wait 48 hours after the concrete was poured before they could do the posttensioning. I'm surprised that the concrete obtained enough strength in just 48 hours to handle the stress of the tendon's tension. This additional 48 hours per each pair of segments explains why construction techniques quickly evolved from cast-in-place to lifting precast segments into place.
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