Revilee Creek Bridge
Photo showing profile of Bailey bridge.
Photo taken by J Randall Houp in January 2009
BH Photo #226499
Not the original bridge at this location. Existing piers are from a previous bridge. As of date, this is the largest Bailey bridge I have found being used in Logan County, Arkansas.
Still undetermined what type of structure this is. It appears to have been assembled from prefab modules but certainly nothing I've ever seen associated with the Bailey company products.
Contact with the county road department may get some information as to the origin.
I just opened the website and kinda walked in on this, but... Am I missing something? This doesn't appear to be any kind of truss at all; it looks kind of like a steel stringer with some sort of through-girder system for retaining the deck... Can someone fill me in? Thanks!
I would have a very hard time calling this a Bailey truss. The Army Field Manual for Baily Trusses https://archive.org/stream/ost-military-doctrine-fm5_277/fm5... shows what a Bailey truss should consist of. That said, many modern or altered Bailey trusses in the USA lack some of the details outlined in the manual, like the design of the transoms or the presence of transom clamps. I think the absence of these sorts of things does not disqualify a bridge from being called a Bailey truss. That said, I think a bridge that lacks even the most basic feature... the Bailey panel... should not be called a Bailey truss. It is merely a modular bridge type of a different design, like a Callender Hamilton Bridge is another form of modular bridge.
From what I can find Bailey bridges (modular truss sections) were the standard in WW2 and saw a lot of use afterwards as they hit the surplus market in huge numbers. The term may have gone from a brand name to generic for any modular bridge.
The Bailey web site doesn't show anything like this bridge in their offerings. There are other companies selling modular bridges, some truss sections like the Bailey, others building bridges from things like recycled railroad flat cars. I've not seen anything like this bridge yet.
These pieces may be reused from some other structure. It may require local research to figure out what the bridge is made of.
A very unusual bridge and worth some extra looking so it can be properly documented.
Clark: Let me know what you find. The only way I knew this was a Bailey bridge was what I had found in either the Booneville newspaper or Paris newspaper. The article read that Logan County was going to put in several Bailey bridges and said they were of Army surplus. A photograph of the so called, "Bailey" appeared in the newspaper. Got me wondering now, are there different varieties of Baileys built?
It certainly looks like a prefab but I think of Baily bridges as having an open truss structure like the ones pictured on their site:
http://www.baileybridge.com/bailey_bridges_03.html
I'll see if I can find additional information about this.
Clark: Did you check all the photos? You can see the pins connecting on the side. Logan County also used cement flooring running down the middle along with the Baileys. Thought this was a bit unusual. Bridge sits on W.P.A. piers and abutments. Let me know if I am wrong on this and I'll correct it. "Ghostbridgehunter"
This looks different from the Bailey trusses I've seen. How can we tell this is a Bailey bridge?
This is clearly not a Bailey truss. It looks like it is the same as the others is Logan county.
I'm pretty sure these are treadway M2 bridges. When the US Army would deploy them (WW II era) the space between the treads would be decked with 4 inches of plywood. The heavy traffic would stay on the treads. The lighter traffic that didn't have a wide enough track would put one wheel on the tread an another on the center decking.
Notice that in the deck photo there is open steel grate where the treadways are - and maybe concrete for the center deck?
These are a simple stringer design. So I'm changing the design details of the Logan county bridges.