The Most Durable Piece of Infrastructure on the Railroad
While turntables, stations, and freight yards disappear, bridges last forever…or until they are replaced by another bridge
I have a “thing” for railroad bridges. I am drawn to them for three reasons: their variety, i.e. they come in all sizes and shapes; the beauty of the bridge itself and, sometimes, its surroundings, and because they are great locations to photograph trains.
For example, before I moved back to Long Island from Greenville, SC, in 1977 I got up early one morning and drove to Clemson to shoot the westbound Southern Crescent crossing an arm of Lake Hartwell. The 12-car train and four E-8(A) locomotives stretched across the unadorned deck girder bridge at that location. It is one of my favorite rail photos.
Bridges are among the most vital pieces of railroad infrastructure. They enable railroads to cross rivers, lakes, chasms, gorges, and valleys. They can replace steep grades and sharp curves with a line that is flat, straight, shorter, and faster, as the Lackawanna did when it built the Tunkhannock Viaduct in Nicholson, PA, which opened in 1915. The savings in time, fuel, and labor and the additional capacity can pay for much of the construction cost.
A bridge over a highway reduces traffic congestion and the risk of collisions between trains and motor vehicles or pedestrians. A bridge over another railroad keeps trains on both routes moving without waiting hours for a superior line to clear.
In a world of change railroad bridges are a constant. Many bridges that date to the 19th Century are still in use.
Railroad bridges have been built with wood, stone or brick masonry, concrete, iron, and steel or a combination of more than one material. The most prevalent types are through truss and deck girder bridges.
They endure because they will be necessary for as long as the railroad is running. A bridge washed away in a flood or heavily damaged in a collision could shut down a rail line for weeks. If the cost of rebuilding is too great, a railroad is likely to shut down the route, as happened to the Florida East Coast’s Key West extension after a hurricane in the 1930s.
During my lifetime, railroads removed roundhouses, turntables, water towers, and coaling towers from their terminals and tore down unused switch towers and passenger and freight stations. Unneeded freight yards have been transformed into development sites filled with commercial and residential high-rises. Thanks to CTC, railroads reduced double and triple track routes to single track in many locations.
Gone, too, are the telegraph poles with their green glass insulators spread out across multiple cross arms. The once-prevalent semaphore signal is a vanishing breed. Tell tales, the suspended webs of rope that warned brakemen of approaching bridges and tunnels, have disappeared as have mail cranes.
In a world of change railroad bridges are a constant. Many bridges that date to the 19th Century are still in use. Others were replaced as traffic needs changed and the spans became structurally obsolescent. In 2009 Union Pacific replaced the famed Kate Shelley high bridge, which was built in 1901. In 2017 Norfolk Southern completed a steel arch bridge over the Genessee River to replace the Portage Viaduct, a spindly trestle over Letchworth Gorge built in 1875.
Up and down Amtrak’s Northeast Corridor older movable bridges are being replaced, in part due to funding from the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law enacted in 2021. Furthest along is the Portal Bridge over the Hackensack River between New York and Newark. Instead of a swing bridge prone to breakdowns and delays, the new fixed bridge will include a series of arches high enough to clear marine traffic.
Other new crossings in the pipeline span the Connecticut River, Housatonic River, Saugatuck River, Norwalk River, Pelham Bay, Susquehanna River, Bush River, and Gunpowder River.
There are approximately 100,000 railroad bridges, according to a railroad bridge safety bill introduced in the U.S. Senate. Most span a creek or a roadway. But they still count in a railroad’s inventory and need to be maintained for safe operations.
Out of these 100,000, fewer than 1,000 warrant our attention because of their length, height or other feature. Some stretch for miles and incorporate multiple bridge types. Many have movable sections that are lifted, rotated up or turned to the side to allow large vessels to pass.
To catalog these crossings, I recently compiled a spreadsheet of more than 640 bridges in 46 states and the District of Columbia that I consider “significant.” With a few exceptions, they are at least 500 feet long and are still in active service. I researched them through multiple sources including Railpictures.net, Wikipedia, Bridgehunter.com, HistoricBridges.org, and Google Maps.
I’m not sharing the spreadsheet at this time. However, I bring to your attention some interesting factoids that could come in handy if you ever become a contestant on “Jeopardy.”
Pennsylvania has the most significant bridges with 46, followed by California with 34. Illinois, New York, and Texas round out the top five with 30 each.
Norfolk Southern’s Lake Ponchartrain Bridge, which is also used by Amtrak, is the longest railroad bridge in the United States, stretching 30,264 feet between New Orleans and Slidell, LA. The next four longest bridges are:
Huey P. Long Bridge, 22,996 feet. From New Orleans to Bridge City, LA, crossing the Mississippi River and used by New Orleans Public Belt, Union Pacific, BNSF, and Amtrak.
Hell Gate Bridge, 17,000 feet. Crossing the East River to connect the New York City boroughs of Queens and the Bronx, and one of the most critical pieces of infrastructure along the Northeast Corridor. It is used by Amtrak and CSX with planned future use by Metro North.
MacArthur Bridge, 13,300 feet. Crosses the Mississippi River between St. Louis, MO, and East St. Louis, IL, and used by Terminal Railroad Association and Amtrak.
CSX’ Henderson Bridge, 12,123 feet. Crosses the Ohio River between Henderson, KY, and Evansville, IN.
The oldest active railroad bridges in the United States are Thomas Viaduct over the Patapsco River in Elkridge, MD, and Canton Viaduct over the Canton River in Canton, MA. Both were built in 1835 by the Baltimore & Ohio and the Boston & Providence Railroads, respectively. Thomas Viaduct is now a CSX property and also used by MARC Commuter Rail. Canton Viaduct is part of the Northeast Corridor and used by Amtrak and MBTA Commuter Rail.
Six bridges on the list were completed during this decade. They include two for Brightline, one for California High-Speed Rail, and BNSF’s second bridge across Lake Pend Oreille in Sandpoint, ID, a location often referred to as The Funnel.
There are 153 moveable bridges on the list. More than half are swing bridges, despite an industry trend to replace them with vertical lift spans. The Arthur Kill Vertical Lift Bridge, between Staten Island, NY, and Elizabeth, NJ, is the longest vertical lift bridge in the world with a main span of 558 feet.
Given that it is the second-longest river in the United States, it should come as no surprise that the Mississippi River is crossed by the most bridges on the list, 29 between Minnesota and Louisiana.
I close with “Echoes of the Rusted Rails,” by Shane Simmons and Melody West, in tribute to a steel trestle in Amonate, Virginia, with special thanks to The Appalachian Project Facebook page for letting me share it.
High above the valley floor,
The railroad trestle spans once more,
A giant’s spine, all iron and wood,
Stretching where the steel once stood.
It carried coal and men with dreams,
Across the rivers, through the seams
Of hills and hollers, wild and wide,
An endless journey, side by side.
Now wind hums through its empty bones,
A hollow sound, a chorus of stones,
That rattle softly from below,
Where grasses and the wildflowers grow.
Once engines roared and whistles cried,
Now silence rules where trains would glide.
The timbers creak, the iron sags,
Like time itself in weathered rags.
Yet there’s a beauty in decay,
In bridges long left to obey
The pull of earth, the song of rain,
The slow return to dust again.
The trestle stands, though bent and worn,
A monument to those long gone,
Who built these paths through rock and sky,
And watched the iron horses fly.