Little Oak Creek Bridge
Facts
- Overview
- Bedstead pony truss bridge over Little Oak Creek, 2.7 mi. west and 3.0 mi. north of Cawker City
- Location
- Mitchell County, Kansas
- Status
- Open to traffic
- History
- Built ca. 1910
- Design
- Bedstead Pratt pony truss
- Dimensions
-
Length of largest span: 40.0 ft.
Total length: 42.0 ft.
Deck width: 15.7 ft.
- Approximate latitude, longitude
- +39.55298, -98.48297 (decimal degrees)
39°33'11" N, 98°28'59" W (degrees°minutes'seconds") - Approximate UTM coordinates
- 14/544420/4378272 (zone/easting/northing)
- Quadrangle map:
- Cawker City
- Land survey
- T. 6 S., R. 10 W., Sec. 6
- Average daily traffic (as of 2002)
- 20
- Inventory numbers
- KS 000620697303620 (Kansas local bridge number on the National Bridge Inventory)
BH 18162 (Bridgehunter.com ID) - Inspection report (as of April 2017)
- Overall condition: Fair
Superstructure condition rating: Fair (5 out of 9)
Substructure condition rating: Satisfactory (6 out of 9)
Deck condition rating: Satisfactory (6 out of 9)
Sufficiency rating: 31.2 (out of 100)
View more at BridgeReports.com
Update Log
- February 17, 2018: New photos from Nick Schmiedeler
- October 3, 2015: Updated by David Backlin: Added Road Name
Sources
- David Backlin - us71 [at] cox [dot] net
- Nick Schmiedeler - nick [at] nickschmiedeler [dot] com
Comments
yes, bottom chord not only not under tension, but drooping pretty drastically on both sides, the drive over to do a U-turn and drive back over again were a bit of a life-gamble....not sure how many more drive-overs this thing has left in it
The lower chord seems not to be under tension. I wonder how much everything shifts when under load.
Nick:
Those bizarre features you have discovered are known as laced top chords and laced bottom chords. These are extremely rare features today.
Some bridges have laced endposts as well. This bridge has laced endposts a lace top cord and a laced bottom cord. As far as lacing is concerned it hits the trifecta. That makes this bridge very unusual.
also, not sure I've seen that laced "running board" and top horizontal before....this one seems unique
this is one wanky, dilapidated old beat-up bedstead-type, basically at the end of a dead-end road before it turns to private property, I imagine it is rarely used at all anymore, I took a short video clip jumping up and down on the deck and gently pushing on the iron, I had to stop it was shaking so badly - would have to say on the new scale, this one would definitely qualify with a "poor" rating
This page's URL is http://bridgehunter.com/ks/mitchell/620697303620/
Interesting situation. It appears the abutments must be leaning in causing the bottom chord to go into compression. On a two panel bridge like this, a truss analysis would show that the bottom chords carry zero load anyway. All of the "tension" load is carried by the truss end diagonals. You can also see the counter diagonal rod sagging from compression like the bottom chord.