St. Charles Air Line Bridge (1919)

It appears there is a development, complete with a riverwalk currently being constructed on the east side of this bridge. Hopefully this will make the bridge more accessible. In addition, with the construction of new bridges to the east (Clark, State, Michigan, etc), I doubt CN will be abandoning this bridge in the near future.

See my photo here, you can see what appear to be concrete blocks that are stuck in some of the holes. https://historicbridges.org/illinois/sbrr/p1460456.jpg

I assume the holes in the counterweight are/were intended for adjusting the weight of the span. Most bascule bridges have a method for adjusting span balance to accommodate changes in weight over service life, this might be changes in deck design, railing, mechanical adjustments that affect balance (new lock motors, etc).

The true mystery is why there are a bunch of holes in the weights....

I'm not Bennett Brauer (Chris Farley character) either.

LOL

Well, I'm definitely no "foamer", I'm not an "expert", I'm not the "source of previous comments on this page" and I'm not "a local resident", but HAER's photo caption may need to be explained by one of the "above".

Particularly the "In conjunction" part...

Merriam Webster says:

"in conjunction with

idiom

Definition of in conjunction with

formal

: in combination with : together with

The concert will be held in conjunction with the festival.

The medicine is typically used in conjunction with other treatments."

8. DETAIL OF CONCRETE COUNTERWEIGHT WHICH WAS OPERATED IN CONJUNCTION WITH BOTH OF BASCULE SPANS OF THE B & O AND THE ST. CHARLES AIRLINE, LOOKING SOUTHEAST - Baltimore & Ohio Railroad, Chicago Terminal Railroad, South Branch of Chicago River Bridge, Spanning South Branch of Chicago River, Chicago, Cook County, IL

http://www.loc.gov/pictures/item/il0633.photos.037176p/

(I am a bit of a smartass on occasion. Sorry about that.)

ADMINISTRATOR needs to DELETE the silly comments on his site that claim falsehoods - i.e., that "...both bridges share a counterweight."

Scores of people look to this site for accurate information - not stupid ruminations of uneducated foamers.

To clarify some rumors forming in here...

The bridges do NOT share a counterweight. If that was the case, then both bridges would be operational instead of the CN bridge being the only one operable.

Anonymous,that is cool being able to street view along the river.Comes in handy when searching for bridges.

You can move on the street view in the map to move along the river. If you look between the two bridges, it looks like they share a control house. The platform and ladder connect the one bridge to the adjacent bridge.

The two separate structures couldn't share a counterweight as they move separately from each other.

I've heard others comment that these bridges share a counterweight but I am not sure that's actually what they share if they share anything. Maybe operating equipment? The Air Line Bridge has wing style counterweights and they should not need any supplemental support. In fact they should be overbuilt and may have had to be reduced in weight, since the Air Line Bridge originally was a couple panels longer and when it was moved here it was made shorter. There is no evidence that the counterweights are connected to B&O Bridge... moreover, if they were connected, wouldn't both bridges have to move at the same time? The Air Line Bridge raises and lowers while the B&O stays put. If anyone can clarify the shared counterweight rumor that would be awesome.

Actually I think CSX still owns the B&O portion of the bridge since they cannot abandon that part due to the fact the bridges share a counterweight.

Don't get me wrong. If there's an interesting painting, drawing or art of some kind of a a particular bridge. By all means post it. THATS interesting. But 2,3,5,10 of each. If you look at the updates page anymore all you find is 1000's of one persons drawings. One or two of each is plenty.

Given the pen chance for any separate categories....the snapshots in time showing different stages of those bridges are interesting to me. I don't spend a lot of time on that span style, still intrigues.

Art is in the eye of the viewer, those paintings of the past are sure treasures, they say these decades will be the lost ones with no bits to find in the shops of our past. All digital?

I'd like to see those abstracts, never did that style either.

Julie, I absolutely agree! I previously uploaded an image of a painting that hangs in the Metropolitan Museum of Art of a bridge, done in the 1800's, that both conveys more than a period photo would and as there are no photos of that bridge, it represents the only image of a long lost bridge.

That said, as reference, unless they are technical drawings, art is subjective as opposed to objective, which, in my opinion, distracts from the overall bridge entry as a research tool. As an example, I plan on a series of bridge paintings as well. I plan on doing them in the style of Jackson Pollack. While each painting will represent a specific bridge, I highly doubt they would add value to the entry for the bridge as reference documents. Thus my suggestion of a separate category.

Also, my previous post was sincere, I really did break out in laughter when I flipped through all of Douglas' sketches.

Art (and I don't mean Art S) is as valid as any of the photographs. What truly is the problem? Don't look at them if you aren't interested. Can you draw? I do paintings of bridges too, and I've posted a few. I'll start posting some more. At one point I had intended to do a painting for every bridge we do, can't keep up, maybe this will be incentive.

Oh my god! That's awesome! Thanks for the comment, otherwise I would never have looked. I literally laughed when I saw the number of drawings! I didn't realize Douglas did more that one picture per bridge. Now, if we could just convince him to do a new picture of this bridge every day, we'd be all set.

It's too bad we can't have a separate section as a repository of the vast pencil sketch collection - we could have 'guess the bridge' contests :^)

Regards,

Art S.

Enough already with the frigging drawings.