...steel truss bridges of the American great plains.

[Daniel Kalal]

Several of these have already been replaced with something not nearly as interesting; many others are likely on a list to be replaced once money can be found.  All of them would have lasted longer than a hundred years if they had been maintained with even casual effort.


Montana



Nebraska




Kansas













Oklahoma



























Texas

[charlie b]

I love bridges of all type.  Probably the engineer in me  :)

Thanks again Daniel.

[Daniel Kalal]

I love bridges of all type.

I'm with you, but it's not easy to love all bridges: here's the current thing across the Cimarron River in Kansas.  You hardly notice it.

[oldbike54]

 Thanks Deke , recognized a bunch of those bridges .

 Dusty

[JJ]

Great photography and interesting subject, as always from Daniel!   Thanks for sharing! :1:

[rboe]

The old bridges are pretty cool, the new ones seem to be much more traffic friendly. Not unlike our motorcycles.

[Pisano]

it's not easy to love all bridges

yes, and even steel truss can stand out like a sore thumb.  This patch was built new for an added train line below.  No attention to match the scheme of the existing bridge ( not that it's any better).  I always comment to on how bad the whole bridge looks every time I drive under it.

(I think you might need to click the picture below to see the full view)


     

[Daniel Kalal]

...stand out like a sore thumb.

that's pretty funny.  Evidently somebody didn't account for the change in slope of what appears to be an off-ramp, so the standard railway bridge section wouldn't have enough clearance above the roadway.  Hence, the truss section.  Do you suppose CN sent a bill to the highway department?



you hate it when your engineering mistakes are so public (to other engineers)...

[Sasquatch Jim]

  You didn't show any of my favorite biker bridges.  The potato grater ones!

[Daniel Kalal]

  You didn't show any of my favorite biker bridges.  The potato grater ones!

It's possible that some of these once had open-grate roadbeds, but, they've been paved and patched so many times since then.  Others remain with their original wood-planking, which I take pretty slow.

The "Bridge of the Gods" over the Columbia River (WA/OR) is one of the worst open-grate bridges for a motorcycle that I've ridden.  It's been several years, so I don't know if it's still that way.  Anybody been on it recently?

[RinkRat II]

 This is the bridge I have to cross daily to get to work. Thanks for the great pics Daniel!

       Paul B

[willowstreetguzziguy]

Pretty soon, they will
 be like dinosaurs!

[rboe]

Aerial lift bridge in Duluth is still open grate. Since it's short and straight it's not too bad. Even better now that I don't live there anymore. 

The old Oliver bridge (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oliver_Bridge) had a wooden covered decking. Had a customer come into the shop looking for bits has he had just crashed on it - in the rain. From the wikipedia it appears they have upgraded it to concrete. That wood was nasty even when dry.

[Sasquatch Jim]

Wooden decking on a bridge can get mossy making it sort of like an oil slick,  Lower the temp to freezing for some real riding experience.
 Potato graters in freezing rain can be very entertaining too.

[G5]

free image hosting


The 2016 coast-to-coast Cannonball run crossed the Wabash Cannonball Bridge, located on the Illinois and Indiana border.

[not-fishing]

One I get to crow about - I did build it.

Both in historic times and the present day, pin-connected metal truss bridges (being easy to dismantle and reassemble) have often been relocated, whether for utilitarian or preservation purposes. However few stories of such relocations are as epic as that of the Folsom Truss Bridge. The bridge was first built here in 1893 to replace the Eklon Toll Bridge. Later, the Rainbow Bridge was completed in 1917 on new alignment as a replacement for the truss bridge. Not being in the way of its replacement, the old truss bridge was left standing and not demolished. It was sold by the county to a Japanese man seeking to avoid the high cost of steel in Japan, but this deal later fell through when war broke out. The bridge had not been moved and remained in its original location. Later, California decided it needed to replace an old suspension bridge over the Klamath River near Walker in Siskiyou County. The state was planning on building a new state highway and bridge on a different alignment in the future (which would turn the bridge and road at Walker back to local control), but the old bridge was so badly deteriorated it could not wait for that new state highway and bridge. Seeking a cheap way to replace the suspension bridge, the state bought the Folsom Truss Bridge back from Japan for $250. In 1930, the bridge was dismantled and moved to the Walker location, 300 miles away. The dismantling of the bridge over the gorge of the American River required a special falsework system. Essentially, a temporary timber truss was built under the bridge which held a traveler that was used to dismantle the truss. This bridge served traffic at Walker until the late 1990s, when the county decided it wanted to replace the bridge, which by then was a historic bridge. Folsom saw this as a unique opportunity to provide a unique, signature pedestrian crossing, while also uniting the community with the bridge that was moved away from them decades ago. They purchased the bridge from Siskiyou County, with the intention of relocating the bridge back to its original 1893 stone abutments, which still remained in place in Folsom after all these years. As a result, on April 15, 2000, no less than 70 years after the bridge had been moved away from Folsom, the bridge reopened to pedestrian traffic on its original 1893 stone abutments.

My company bulldozed the hillside and assembled the bridge on the south shore.  Once the basic truss was assembled it was lifted on a pylon and jacked across the river on shoring then set on the rebuilt abutments.

Sacramento County has the cousin to this bridge, disassembled in their corp yard but I'll probably be dead before they try to erect it.