Very tragic and very memorable railroad bridge collapses

Some of them last damn near forever. Here’s a list of surviving Roman bridges. Admittedly, some are in a ruined state, but the usual reason is they were acted upon by outside forces such as acts of war, earthquakes, or sometimes the locals pirating the stone for use as building material long after the legions were gone.

“Go ahead, no-one’s lookin’!” [:-^]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Roman_bridges

Probably, most likely definately, when the PRR in 1887 started a program to rebuild most of its major bridges under the direction of Chief Engineer William H. Brown those Roman bridges were remembered so they went with stone masonry bridges, believing stone masonry was stronger and more durable than steel, and certainly m

Unless you recall all the debris got caught there and subsequently burned…

Death by drowing, fire, or both?

Rumor always was that Shocks Mills was not built right. It wasn’t that old…

It depends on who wins the engineering vs. accounting battle!

Yes, I’m perfectly aware of that horrific part of the disaster Zug, but the point was the bridge held, even with all those tons of debris piled up against it.

Whether it might have been better if the bridge collapsed and sent all that debris further down the Conemaugh Valley is another matter. Somehow I don’t think the folks downstream might have thought so.

And all that happened because of that club.

Tragedy all around.

No argument with you there.

Would I be correct that no one from the South Fork Hunting & Fishing Club went to jail?

Certainly not the principals.

This sort of thing would never happen today, would it?

Well, a large part of that might have had to do with who built the ridiculous reservoir and dam in the first place… and for what purpose. They essentially abandoned it in place when the canal proved even less profitable than the railroad, and that is how the rich boys acquired their fine lake. Did you think even tycoons had that kind of capital to spare?

If I remember correctly, a proper understanding of Roman hydraulic cement didn’t come until the 1880s (for some reason I remember Viollet-le-Duc which seems a bit unlikely) and a certain amount of long-term longevity was sacrificed in structures that used different cement.

For true permanence down the centuries you have to look at Persian bridge construction, which used metal (probably a low-melting lead alloy) as the mortar between stones. The problem here was the same that threatened the Pequest Fill, that other ultimately less ‘destructible’ bridge replacement, or much of Nero’s Golden House or Hadrian’s Villa – humans seeking cheap building material.

Apparently some did. The Racquette Lake Railroad was built, so the story goes, because Collis Huntington didn’t like sitting on a keg of nails on the way to his great camp in the Adirondacks…

Either that, or because his wife told him she wouldn’t go to the camp any more unless she could travel by train. After all, he’d build a transcontinental railroad, surely he could manage seventeen miles through the woods…

From Harry Harter’s “Fairy Tale Railroad.”

Back on topic - I was going to throw “The Angola Horror” into the fray, but on double-checking the reference, I found that while the incident involved a bridge, the root cause of the disaster was a derailment on a bridge, not the bridge itself. It’d been a while since I read about it.

He doesn’t mean they don’t work well as bridges; it’s that the impediment to ‘navigation’ and the constriction of the channel by the relatively many piers are a problem; and that the cost for long spans or higher piers rapidly goes up out of proportion to modern steel construction.

We had an Erie steel bridge that was thrown up as an emergency expedient in 1885 recently be replaced … by an indeterminate-construction arch structure, I believe… which was limited only by its older construction and lower inherent factor of safety from staying in service much longer. Poughkeepsie was a rickety thing from day one, but it took a fire combined with a bankruptcy to kill it.

What I have not seen taken up yet are tragic and memorable accidents from very small bridge collapses. Or even culverts.

On second look and consideration I think you are exactly right that that’s what was meant.

Scouring of a bridge pier came very close to causing the failure of the KCS bridge over the Mississippi river at Vicksburgh, Ms. Cannot remeber how long it was out of service. That toll bridge scarred me to death one night when it still was the only way to cross the river. I was on the toll bridge which had rather narrow lanes. Going east next to rails an IC freight came west with headlight in eyes and the shaking and swaying of the bridge caused me to stop until train left bridge. Of course I was not the only one to stop.

Road closed once I-20 bridge over Mississippi was opened to traffic.

Another problem is sometimes when a bridge pier does not reach bedrock, they will pound in a lot of wood piling as a base which might not last forever. I think this was a problem that caused the Tappen Zee highway bridge in NY to be replaced.

You mean like the one at Chatsworth Illinois in 1887?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1887_Great_Chatsworth_train_wreck

http://www.peoriacountyillinois.info/news/chatsworthacc.html

Jeff

just so.

OK - IF you insist:

August 7, 1904 8PM Eden, CO (just north of Pueblo)

Missouri Pacific Train #11 on Rio Grande/ Engine & 8 cars into Dry Creek Arroyo

89 dead, 22 never found

…and very few know about it. (wrong sized bridge for the drainage area involved) If you are southbound on I-25 coming into Pueblo, stop at the rest area just north of town and read the plaque (if the lowlifes have not defaced it again)

Another problem is sometimes when a bridge pier does not reach bedrock, they will pound in a lot of wood piling as a base which might not last forever. I think this was a problem that caused the Tappen Zee highway bridge in NY to be replaced.

To take a slightly different tack, there was a major bridge failure in Australa which was seen coming and no accident resulted.

The Hawkesbury River Bridge north of Sydney, New South Wales is on the main line linking the two largest cities in the state, Sydney and Newcastle. The bridge was built by the New York Bridge Company in 1889. but by 1939 the second pier from the south bank had shifted owing to it not being set on bedrock.

The Hawkesbury River is a major river, and the area around the bridge was described by a Norwegian friend as a :“fjiord”. The climb up from the river on the south side is one of the steepest climbs in the country. So it isn’t surprising that the bedrock is a long way down in the silt.

Much was said in 1946 when a new bridge was completed that the problem would not recur since the new pier in the affected area was sunk hundreds of feet through the silt to bedrock.

Now however, this pier seems to be shifting, again some fifty years after contstruction. It is possible that the rock reached in the 1940s was just a layer in the silt and not bedrock.

Currently only one freight train is alllowed on the double track bridge at a time.

Peter

The Milwaukee had a tragic bridge failure on Jun 19, 1938 with the Custer Creek bridge (east of Mles City) being damaged by a flash flood moments before the Olympian crossed it. Two cars ended up submerged in the floodwaters and death toll was estimated at 47.

Personal note, I remember seeing this on a “This Day in History” newspaper column and mentioning to my dad. My dad said he remembered hearing about people waiting for that train at the Miles City depot.