These are notes that I am writing to help me learn our industrial history. They are my best understanding, but that does not mean they are a correct understanding.
I don't normally bother with out-of-state steel girder bridges because there are plenty of examples in Illinois. But while researching videos of moving a couple of truss spans into place, I came across the video below that explains how large girders (up to 159'x16' and 150 tons) are fabricated, test-assembled, test-lifted, transported and re-assembled to build the bridge.
Capitol Steel & Iron was the steel fabricator. The bridge spans were completely assembled in their building, then taken apart for shipment. This guaranteed that the bridge erectors would not encounter any "surprises" during assembly in the field in terms of hole alignments, etc.
The video was published in 2011 and their URL, http://www.capitol-steel.com/, is now invalid. A Google search indicates this 100-year old company has been bought by a China company. It was in the city because the transport distance was 4.2 miles. Its longest bay is one of the longest in the country --- 1,200 feet.
The video also shows how two trucks, each with 23-axle trailers, are needed to transport the girders. The rear truck pushes its trailer. Several agencies provided escorts for the trips that started at 2am.
It is so nice to see some truss spans being built instead of being blown up. As part of widening I-235, two long spans were needed because the railroad crosses the road on a sharp angle. These trusses are 45' tall. This bridge move reminds me of the move of a 63' high truss in South Chicago.
ODTO posted an album of 12 photos with the comment:
The I-235 Off-Broadway project in Oklahoma City takes a dramatic turn starting at 7 p.m. Friday, Jan. 26, as all lanes of the highway are scheduled to be closed for an extended weekend from south of I-44 to N. 36th St. to allow for a spectacular feat of engineering to take place. The interstate is scheduled to reopen no later than 6 a.m. Tuesday, Jan. 30, but potentially could open earlier. Drivers will need to use I-35, I-40, I-44, SH-74/Lake Hefner Parkway and Lincoln Blvd. during this closure. Due to their size and weight, it will be a slow and steady operation to move the two bridge spans into place taking up to a full day per span. The bridge structures will be hoisted up on self-propelled mobile transporters and inched along the highway into their new position over the interstate. This is the first time this innovative bridge-moving technique is being used in Oklahoma, allowing the Oklahoma Department of Transportation to schedule short closures of the highway during the more than two-year interstate widening and reconstruction project.
According to the comments on the video, the project was done before rush hour on Monday.
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Hydraulic lifts were used to raise one of the 2-million-pound steel bridge structures nearly 16 feet off the ground to be placed on top of self-propelled mobile transporters
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The first bridge was put in place over I-235 Saturday, Jan. 27.
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Workers prepare the second I-235 railroad bridge structure to be moved into place later this morning
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(new window) A nice overview of the move (and a couple of trains). The truss is designed to be supported at the ends, but they are supporting it in the middle for the move. Since it is just dead weight, no live weight (i.e. train), it is overbuilt enough that it can tolerate being lifted in the middle. I say it is overbuilt because the size of the member trusses does not vary depending upon their position in the truss. Standardization of the truss members costs more steel, but it simplifies construction. That is, reducing the cost of construction probably offsets the cost of extra steel.
(new window) I noticed around 1:40 that they didn't start building the mats on the site until the bridge was close. It seems to me that they could have started building the mats as soon as the interstate had been closed and had them built before the bridge arrived. At 1:46 the bridge has arrived, but it has to wait, and wait, for the mats to be finished. At least we get to watch a train go by while the bridge is waiting. Obviously, ODOT doesn't care much about how long they disrupt traffic in the city. I'm sure the workers like the project taking longer because they are getting paid overtime. It makes you wonder how many other projects ODOT does that has such poor planning. Judging by the ruts left in the dirt by the left mover at 2:25, it was a good thing that the soil wasn't much softer.
When I described old pin-connected truss bridges, I learned from Brian Solomon's North American Railroad Bridges:
Rivets were replaced with high-strength bolts starting in 1960. Bolts are more expensive to manufacture, but the skill and tools needed to install them and replace them is less sophisticated than that needed by rivets.
Historic Bridges does not include bridges built after 1970s because he defines historic bridges as those built with rivets.
(Railroads still have old truss bridges because they don't get 80% financing from the Federal Government for new bridges like the state departments of transportation do. For railroads, it is cheaper to maintain a truss bridge than replace it.)
Riveting is labor intensive. You need someone heating them until they are, literally, red hot; someone to catch a rivet and insert it into a hole; and someone on the other side to hammer it down to a round head. More workers are needed if additional people are needed to catch a rivet and toss it to the next person closer to the work site. That is, if a relay team is needed between the forge and the riveters.
In this first video, the receiver literally catches the rivets in his gloves. It looks like both sides use pneumatic hammers. I wonder what synchronizes the hits by the hammers.
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In addition to Rosie the Riveter, Canada chose rivet tossing as an example that a woman can do almost anything a man can do if the country is at war, including tossing and catching hot rivets with a bucket.
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Note that the women in the 1940s were wearing hard hats. Men didn't start wearing them until a few decades later.
This video not only shows more modern riveting tools, it shows a pneumatic wrench that is used on nuts. Note that modern riveters carry the hot rivets rather than toss them.
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This video clearly illustrates that pneumatic hammers are used on both sides. And they also first "tacked" the sheets of steel together using nuts and bolts.
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Obviously, one reason why the rivet needs to be red hot is so that it is malleable enough to be hammered down into a round head. But another reason was so that it would contract when it cooled and provide a compression force, F, to squeeze the plates together. For applications like the boiler being built in the third video, you want the plates squeezed together so tightly that any gap between them is less than the size of a water molecule. That is, you don't want steam escaping from the boiler seams. Furthermore, the rivets are prestressed. It would take a force greater than F to open up a gap between the plates.
I learned recently that another advantage of rivets is that the holes do not need to be exactly the same size or precisely aligned. The diameter of the rivet can be smaller than the hole size because when it is hammered it will mold itself to the width and alignment of the holes. So you not only have good compression strength, you have good slip control.
An issue with rivets is that even though the contraction during cooling creates a compression force, the strength of that force is unknown and varies from rivet to rivet.
In 1934, researchers reported that high-strength bolts (>= 54ksi) could be tightened enough to prevent slip in structural joints.
Based on tests performed at the University of Illinois, Wilson and Thomasin 1938:
The fatigue strength of high-strength bolts appreciably smaller than the holes in the plates was as great as that of well driven rivets if the nuts were screwed up to give a high tension in the bolt.
The Research Council on Riveted and Bolted Structural Joints (RCRBSJ) was formed in 1947. The simplification of bridge maintenance drove the research to replace rivets with bolts. "In the early 1950s, the installation procedures, the slip resistance of joints having different surface treatments, and the behavior of joints under repeated loadings were studied....In 1960, BS 3294 was issued to establish the design procedure and field practice....The first edition of the Guide to DesignCriteria for Bolted and Riveted Connectionssponsored by the council and published in 1974, provided a valuable summary of connection and connector behavior for designers and specification writers alike."
Three grades of bolts are specified. A307 (>= 60ksi) is made with low carbon steel. A325 (>= 105-120ksi) is "made by heat-treating, quenching, and tempering medium carbon steel." A490 (>= 150-170ksi) is made with "quenched and tempered alloy steel." The higher-strength bolts also have finer threads and are marked [BoltCouncil, p36] to indicate their strength.
Cyclical loads can cause bolt failure independent of the grade of the bolt. The important aspect of fatigue failure is the range of the stress during a loading cycle. [BoltCouncil, p21]
"North American practice prior to 1985 had been to require that all high-strength bolts be installed so as to provide a high level of preload, regardless of whether it was needed (bolts in a slip-resistant connection or in a connection subject to tension) or not needed (bolts in a bearing-type connection)." The preload should be 70% of the minimum specified tensile strength of the bolt. "To overcome the variability of torque control, early efforts were made to develop a more reliable tightening procedure. The American Association of Railroads (AAR), faced with the problem of tightening bolts in remote areas without power tools, conducted a large number of tests to determine if the turn-of-nut could be used as a means of controlling bolt tension. These tests led to the conclusion that one turn from a finger-tight position produced the desired bolt tension." But "finger tight" was discovered to be highly variable. So now a nut is to be tightened to a "snug fit" with an impact wrench then turned some more according to a table that expresses bolt length in terms of bolt diameter. "Snug fit" is when the wrench starts impacting. [BoltCouncil, pp54-56] Japan uses a "smart electric wrench" that detects the first nonlinearity of current draw of a DC motor. That is, where the bolt transitions from its elastic to its plastic stage. [BoltCouncil, p60]
Holes are typically 1/16 in. larger than the bolt because the friction between the plates caused by the preload tension of turning the nut an appropriate arc past "snug" is enough to prevent slippage. This allows holes to be misaligned up to 1/16 in. Does misalignment reduce the slip strength of a joint? No if the bolts and plates are ductile enough to absorb 1/16 in. of movement. The irony of the high-strength A490 bolts is that they are less ductile. In fact, misalignments will reduce the slip of a joint that is overloaded because some of the bolts are doing more than their fair share of absorbing shear stress. [BoltCouncil, Chapter 11]
A rather obvious advantage of preloading (prestressing) a bolt to 70% of its minimum tensile strength is that it would take a tensile force larger than the preloading before the two plates separated. Another advantage is that it reduces the range of cyclical loading, which reduces the risk of metal fatigue cracks forming, which reduces the risk of metal fatigue failure. If a 10ksi load is applied to a bolt that is preloaded to 100ksi, then the change is 10%. But if it is applied to a bolt with 10ksi preloading, then the change is 100%. Heavy trucks crossing a bridge is a cyclic load on the components of that bridge.
My uncle shared this picture with me which I had never seen before. It was taken by my grandfather of a water tower for steam locamotives that once stood off of Terry Ave between Rathbone and Jericho Road. I only know where it was located because he had the foresight to write a map on the back of the picture.
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See the EJ&E Aurora Depot for an annotated historical aerial showing where the CM&G left the EJ&E/Joliet, Aurora & Northern Railway west of Lake Street. This image marks the continuation of the mainline of the CM&G through Aurora, and the red circle indicates the location of the tower. Below the satellite image is an historical aerial that I analyzed to determine the location of the CM&G mainline and tower.
1938 Aerial Photo from ILHAP
Dennis DeBruler commented on Martin's share
I think it was between the CM&G mainline on the right and a siding on the left. The code line further to the right in the photo would mark where the CB&Q route was. Back then, CB&Q still had the original route just north of today's elevated route.
Paul Krueger commented on Martin's share
The MILW removed their water tank in the August 1947-December 1948 timeframe.
Jeff Kehoe posted It's been mentioned here that finding photos of the Gary, especially old ones, can be difficult. One taken in Aurora in 1934 is probably rare then, and credit should go to Griffith RR Pictures of Aurora.
Where the EJ&E curved north in Aurora is where the CM&G left the EJ&E. It curved south until it was on the north side of the CB&Q tracks, which it followed out of town.
A video of a machine that lays long track panels that are pre-built with concrete ties. (source) The end of the video shows why the train included so many ballast cars. The question on my mind is not how you dump the ballast, but, after you bury the track under the thick layer of ballast, how do you raise the track above it? The videos seem to skip that issue because Part 4 already has the track on top of the dumped ballast.
This is a longer version of the track laying that shows all of the steps including moving a stack of four panels to the front of the train.
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The videos above provide the context for this video:
David Daruszka shared
[He did do a good job of chaining down his load. The chains pulled the truck over!]
It is hard to believe that this happened in real life. I wonder who had the correct space between the old track and the new track. That brought out the white hats (managers) to help stare at the problem.
Sedat Saygac posted Rick Beale: So much for GIS & GPS technology. Sedat Saygac shared
This machine uses CWR (Continuous Welded Rail) instead of track panels.
You can see the piers through the arches in some of the photos of the NS/Wabash Bridge just to the south.
Stephen Huss posted Here are two pictures of a tangerine Interurban car crossing Lake Decatur Immediately north of the Wabash concrete arch bridge ; both are likely taken from the Wabash R. O. W. Karen Havener ParjaniNorm remember the tracks going down middle of Broadway street, and my dad talking about them . I don't remember ever seeing the cars running on them. These are neat photos Steve .
Manitowoc Engineering was a ship building company that transitioned to crane building. During WWII, they were still building boats, and they produced 28 submarines. These were some of the boats that caused the bridges on the Chicago Sanitary & Ship Canal to be made movable because the St. Lawrence Seaway did not open until 1959.
I knew Manitowoc got into the crane building business because no one was building a crane big enough to meet their needs. Judging from some comments, these submarine modules were the lifts that required a bigger crane.
Slim Cooper posted
1. "Speed Cranes" lifting Section H of the Peto (SS-265), into place 21 June 1941. The ship alongside this berth is the passenger boat SS Theodore Roosevelt which was laid up at the yard all during WWII. It was used to hide goings-on from possible prying eyes. Note: The "Speed Cranes" were designed and built by the shipyard specifically to handle the Submarine Sections. At the time they were about the biggest capacity crawler cranes built. The design later became the standard 3900 model produced by Manitowoc Co. and was one of their most popular models until superseded by heavier models. David Waller Them were big cranes in their day Mike Collins There was 28 submarines built in Manitowoc. The Museum there has history on them. The Cobia is at the museum, can take tour. The Cobia is the same class as the Manitowoc Subs, but built in Ohio, I believe. None of the 28 survived. My Dad served on the Menhaden SS-377. One of the 28. Bob LeClair Four of the boats were lost to WWII action. The rest made it through the war. Some were modified and served until about 1960, others were sold off to other countries like Brazil and Turkey. Mike Larson That's an interesting photo. A lot of the ones in the company archives when I worked there had the face of the submarine section grayed over to hide detail so enemies couldn't see the details of the sub's construction. Photos like this were few.
Rick Webber commented on Slim's post
Mike Collins I was just running a 3900w at the mouth of Chicago river at the lake. This memorial was just outside the job on the river near Navy Pier in Chicago. The other side lists each submarine built. Rick Webber It's on the riverwalk on the south side of the river. Worth checking out. And the Tiki Bar is next door so on a nice day this spring you can relax and have a drink and watch the boats.
Barry Thornberry posted
Photo Notes: Manitowoc 3900 hard at work lifting a section of a World War II Gato Class Submarine for Manitowoc Shipbuilding. Al Marchitto JrThe first 3900s at the Manitowoc shipyard.
Ad Gevers shared J. Mike Poupore: 1942 using two 60 ton 3900s. John Ambro: Manitowoc Shipbuilding made submarines. There’s one at the Wisconsin Maritime Museum there. While not built in Manitowoc, it’s the same class. The Cobia Jim Browne: Invented the 3900 just to have something that could handle those hull sections.
The first hull section of the submarine USS Peto is suspended from the booms of two "Manitowoc Speedcrane" crawler liftcranes as they set it in place on the building ways at the Manitowoc Shipbuilding Company in Manitowoc, Wisconsin on June 18, 1941. The crane operators are visible in the crane cabs as other shipyard workers, some sitting on keel blocks in the foreground, observe. The windowed facade of the shipyards' newly built fabrication shop is dominant in the left background. The "Peto" was the first of twenty-eight submarines built by the Manitowoc Shipbuilding Company for the U.S. Navy during World War II. This first section, identified as "Section J," comprised the control room portion of the submarine. One of sixteen separate sections, it weighed about 35 tons. Its placement on the ways at 12:30 p.m. on June 18, 1941 marked the "laying of the keel." The Peto would be launched April 30, 1942 and commissioned November 21, 1942. The two new cranes shown here, prototypes for what would become the Manitowoc Shipbuilding Company Model 3900 Cranes, were developed by the company's crane division specifically for the submarine building program because existing cranes of the day were not strong or flexible enough to lift and maneuver the huge hull sections. Not only were Manitowoc cranes vital to the work at the shipyards, but six were shipped to Hawaii for use in salvage and rebuilding after the December 7, 1941 bombing attack on Pearl Harbor.
Hans van Vliet posted
Placing a hull section of a submarine at Manitowoc Shipbuilding. Ken HartNorth shore of Manitowoc river..background MirroAluminum!..
Hans van Vliet commented on Ken's comment in a posting
City of Joliet, Illinois, Government posted Historic Preservation Month: Twenty-eight Gato/Balao Class submarines were built in Manitowoc, Wisconsin. After completion of crew training and sea trials in Lake Michigan, these submarines sailed through the Chicago River and the Sanitary & Ship Canal to Lockport where they were placed on specialty-built floating dry docks. These dry docks then moved through the locks, through Joliet, onwards to the Mississippi River, and then down to New Orleans, Louisiana. Once their periscopes were reinstalled, they traveled across the Gulf of Mexico through the Panama Canal to the Pacific theater of WWII. Four of the Manitowoc Submarines were lost in combat during the war, with the loss of over 300 officers and men. These four submarines brought the total number of submarines lost in World War II, to 52. A total of 3,000 officers and men are now on Eternal Patrol. On Wednesday, June 14th [2023] at 11:00 am, the USS Chicago Base in conjunction with the City will be dedicating a new monument to remember the Manitowoc submarine expedition and the men who served on board all World War II submarines at the Joliet Veterans Memorial at Bicentennial Park. All are welcome to attend this dedication ceremony.
Hans van Vliet posted seven photos with the comment: "Manitwoc Speedcranes during the construction of the first submarine: Peto, build at Manitowoc Shipbuilding Co. 1942."
1 Ben StalveyBen and 4 others manage the membership, moderators, settings, and posts for Manitowoc Crane Enthusiasts.Manitowoc transporter Hans van VlietEarly version David GuarinoThat is a small area to spend a lot of time underwater. I remember seeing the captain's 'cabin' on a WW2 submarine. It was about the size of a small closet. Interesting how they constructed them in sections like that. I think Electric Boat/GD still does it that way. Hans van VlietWhen Manitowoc starts building submarines in this way they where ahead of that time. They delivered their first submarine 228 days ahead of schedule. Finally they build 28 subs, and the last one delivered on the date scheduled for the 10th submarine of the original contract. Total production of 28 submarines was completed for $5,190,681 less than the contract price.
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Hans van Vliet posted four photos with the comment: "Pictures taken during the construction of the submarine Pogy at Manitowoc Shipbuilding Co. 1942."
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Hans van Vliet posted
Manitowoc Speedcrane with jib attachment (left) during the completion of the submarine Robalo at Manitowoc Shipbuilding 1943
Matthew Floorguy Manning posted
Here's a cool thing I learned several years ago when visiting Manitowoc, Wi, during WW2, submarines were manufactured there & put on barges & floated down to the Illinois river & then to the Mississippi River to New Orleans for them to put the final touches on the subs. They said at the museum that they couldn't float them down the river, is because the draft were to deep for the subs. I would like to see more pics of subs on barges going down the Mississippi, if any of you guys have any.
The Manitowoc-built submarines have become known as Freshwater Submarines since we were the only freshwater port to build subs. Of the 28 submarines built here, 25 were built in time to see action during the war. Together they sank 132 Japanese ships. Four Manitowoc submarines were lost at sea, USS Robalo, USS Golet, USS Kete, and USS Lagarto. The four boats and their brave crews are now on Eternal Patrol.
