Book photo: Overview
This photo comes from George S. Morison's 1892 book, "The Cairo Bridge"
Photo archived by the Historic American Engineering Record
BH Photo #102082
I have an article about this bridge from the July 1952 "Railroad" magazine. It says construction started in 1887, total length was 10,560 feet and the nine overhead trusses were replaced with six new trusses. Also three new piers were built on the Kentucky side of the bridge. The new spans were added in one day each so the bridge could be closed as little as possible. As the new trusses were finished they were raised to the pier height and the old truss was slid off while the new truss was moved into place.
The 1952 story has the bridge at 10,560 feet. I added up the trusses and came up with 10,496 feet. The Railroad story states that approaches were converted to embankments during the life of the first bridge and total length was reduced to 7865 feet. I am wondering where the entry distance of 20,461 feet came from as I suspect it is an error.
That's a really strange looking truss. I see more tension members being used as braces above the crossmembers that're a little under halfway up, are those lateral or longitudinal?
HAER NE-2 Drawings Converted To PDF
This Bridge is huge
Ed,
There was 9,901 feet of timber approach trestle in the original bridge according to this link https://web.archive.org/web/20120806180413/http://bridgestun... . Adding that to the 10,560-foot metal structure gives 20,461 feet. The reason it shows up as 10,560 feet in 1952 is because the timber approaches were filled in with dirt embankments in 1901, just twelve years after the bridge opened.