(
Bridge Hunter;
Historic Bridges;
B&T;
Satellite)
(Update:
more work by B&T.)
"The last passenger train crossed the bridge in 1937, and most freight traffic was gone by the 1970s. The last diesel engine crossed the bridge in 1985." [BridgeHunter]
"It was the largest cantilever span in the country when completed." The span between center of towers is 551' (168m); the total cantilever structure is 998' (304m); and it has a height of 258' (78.6m). [HistoricBridges]
It's design height was increased by 5' 6" so that it could beat out the
1877 Cincinnati Southern's High Bridge by 6". "Although planned to be six inches higher than High Bridge, it ended up being 12 inches lower and couldn’t boast of being the highest bridge structure in the nation." However, it was "the highest single-span cantilever structure in the world." [B&T] (The CS bridge is a multi-span truss bridge.)
Note the two platforms from which they now
bungee jump.
The industrial spur down to the river confused me until I realized the black rectangle by the river was a power plant. The
switchyard and transmission lines still exist. "Freight traffic, while never significant, remained steady until a derailment at the Tyrone Power Station led to the spur’s closure in 1979. A runaway locomotive on the steep spur destroyed several coal cars." [B&T]
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1954 Tyrone Quad @ 24,000 |
The power plant must have continued operation for a while after the 1979 derailment using barges because it was still standing in 2018.
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Google Earth, Apr 2018 |
This bridge looks really spindly. I wonder if the coal cars going to the power plant were partly empty to meet a weight restriction.
This route was just a local branch between Southern's mainline to Louisville and their mainline to Cincinnati.
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1957 Winchester and 1956 Louisville Quads @ 250,000 |
Three figures from the Apr 5, 1890, Engineering News via
Historic Bridges via Google.
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Photo from Pinterest via BridgeHunter, License: Creative Commons Attribution-Share-Alike (CC BY-SA) Hughes Market and Meat Processing Inc posted
Did you know Kentucky is home to the only 3 span Warren deck truss S-bridge in the U.S. The Jo Blackburn Bridge, which carries U.S. 62 across the Kentucky River between Anderson and Woodford counties. The 1,256-foot-long bridge was commissioned by the State Highway Commission of Kentucky and built in 1932 by the Virginia Bridge Co. Running parallel to the Blackburn bridge is Young’s High Bridge, a railroad cantilever bridge built in 1889, one of the oldest and tallest still standing today. Both bridges are next to Wild Turkey Distillery. |
A big bridge uses big pins.
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Nov 2022 Photo by Sherman Cahal via BridgeHunter and B&T |
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