Fox News is reporting that flooding has caused the collapse of a railroad bridge over the Cedar River in Cedar River, Iowa. Several railroad car are reportedly in the water along with a lot of debris. Don’t have any other details at this point…
Ross
CRANDIC in Cedar RAPIDS on the Cedar River.
Dave H.
…Is that the one the RR had placed a line of loaded hoppers across the bridge to help keep it in place…A practice used for decades.
Yep, I have a picture of it in the Flooding In Upper Midwest thread.
…Thanks Brian…I’ll go take a look. I did see that bridge on network TV and at that time the water was lapping at the bridge bottom.
A bridge {B&O}, of the side girder type {about 4 sections long}, that still exists down in Johnstown, Pa. was saved way back in 1936 by doing the loading bit…Loaded coal hoppers were stretched across it during that flood that was up to it and “saved it”…
When the bridge went, I heard a reporter say that the cars fell in are making the flooding even worse than it if the cars “filled with sand” didnt fall in. The reporter from MSNBC also stated that she wouldnt be surprised if “the city went after the railroad for some compensation due to the cars damming the river even more”.
Ive only seen one video of the bridge coming down. Tried a youtube search but found nothing. Does anybody have a link to a video of the bridge coming down?
Paul
I remember seeing a snippet of video showing it going in, but I can’t find it anywhere on the local news sites now. www.kcrg.com has a couple of pictures that someone submitted in the YouNews section under Railroad Bridge Collapse that caught it going.
Considering the magnitude of this flood, I don’t think the new obstacles added by the bridge collapse made that big of a difference in the water level. It was a gamble in an effort to save the bridge- the same gamble was taken at both C&NW bridges, and they appear to be holding thus far.