A real oddity.
This week's Saturday Timewatch features Riverside Swinging Bridge, the last remaining railroad swing bridge in Texas.
It was built across Trinity River in 1904 for the International & Great Northern Railroad Company. Manufactured by the Wisconsin Bridge and Iron Company, based in Milwaukee, the parts were shipped via rail to Texas.
The oddity is that it only ever swung twice, once during its inauguration ceremony, then during a 1926 flood to accommodate large logs and driftwood. It seems nobody realised that barges and riverboats rarely if ever came this far up river! In 1955, the Missouri Pacific Railroad absorbed the line and the Riverside Swinging Bridge was welded into a fixed bridge. It remains so today having been placed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1979.
A real oddity.
This week's Saturday Timewatch features Riverside Swinging Bridge, the last remaining railroad swing bridge in Texas.
It was built across Trinity River in 1904 for the International & Great Northern Railroad Company. Manufactured by the Wisconsin Bridge and Iron Company, based in Milwaukee, the parts were shipped via rail to Texas.
The oddity is that it only ever swung twice, once during its inauguration ceremony, then during a 1926 flood to accommodate large logs and driftwood. It seems nobody realised that barges and riverboats rarely if ever came this far up river! In 1955, the Missouri Pacific Railroad absorbed the line and the Riverside Swinging Bridge was welded into a fixed bridge. It remains so today having been placed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1979.