1889 Bunge Jumping/NS/Southern Young's High Bridge over Kentucky River at Tyrone, KY

(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.)

Street View, Aug 2022

Note the two platforms from which they now bungee jump.

Street View

 

Nick Martoo posted
Young’s High Bridge, Kentucky. Hasn’t seen trains since the 80s. Now a bungee jumping platform.

Joe McCauley: One problem with the bridge that led to its abandonment (for RR use) was that it couldn't support heavier trains (because trains weren't as heavy when it was built, and one supposes it may have also developed structural issues over time). This limited how it could be used, and it wasn't cost effective to repair or replace it.

By contrast, High Bridge of Kentucky (a little ways upstream) can carry full-weight trains without issue and is still in active service.

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]

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.

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.

Street View

There is still track on the east side of the bridge. That is because the Bluegrass Scenic Railroad and Museum uses the route to run excursion trains west of Louisville. [B&T]

Satellite

This route was just a local branch between Southern's mainline to Louisville and their mainline to Cincinnati.

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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1 of 8 photos posted by Abandoned
Let's look into two of the Louisville Southern Railroad's most significant bridges in Kentucky: Young's High Bridge across the Kentucky River gorge at Tyrone and a viaduct over a branch of the Cedar Brook.
Read on in our latest Journal entry, "Along the Louisville Southern Railroad": https://abandonedonline.net/along-the-louisville-southern-railroad/
Abandoned shared
[The bridge in the background is the Jo Blackburn Bridge or the Tyrone "S" Bridge.]

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.

Nov 2022 Photo by Sherman Cahal via BridgeHunter and B&T