CGW - Des Moines River Bridge

Bad news everyone, the last of the four spans of the CGW Bridge went down yesterday. See link below:

http://whotv.com/2013/09/11/demolition-video-railroad-bridge...

A sad end for a bridge that could have been part of the bike trail network serving Des Moines. UP RR plans to have everything removed (piers and all) by the end of the year. :-(

Nathan (Holth), if you want to puke, I have a huge barf can for you so you can go to town and fill it up. ;-)

That would be a great idea!

I am currently leading a charge to save the last span of the bridge. I have heavy support from Des Moines historians, who either want it rehabbed as an overlook, or relocated. I have made a save the bridge page too. I think we can preserve the remaining history here.

https://www.facebook.com/SaveTheDSMRRBridge

Keep up the great photography Matt! Its good people are photographing this historic structures demise!

December 21, 2012

December 01 2012

We had almost no rain this summer & very little snow last winter, so water levels are low. Quite a contrast from the 2008 (& 1993) floods.

Took the first photo last Monday, second span went down sometime last week.

John, the article you linked to on the Red Bridge page- http://www.bridgehunter.com/ia/polk/union-railroad/ - mentions that the CGW bridge is being removed for flood control purposes. The river channel is to be widened at the bridge site, dooming it.

http://businessrecord.com/Main.asp?SectionID=37&SubSectionID...

I can try to get in contact with him. I think he could cut up some pieces of lattice for people

Another option is pieces of stone....

John,

Perhaps we could have him donate some of the bridge parts so that the participants of the 2013 Historic Bridge Conference can pick up a piece of history. I know I'm interested in a piece of the truss bridge for sure, but not too heavy as I'll need to take it back to Germany with me. Can you find out how it can be done? Thanks!

An ironic note is that individual spans on this bridge were likely erected in less than 30 days.

Talked to the demolisher yesterday. Luckily he knows me from his days taking down the bridge in Carver, MN, so I got special privileges including walking out on the bridge and a personal tour of the remaining three spans. He says it takes over 30 days to tear down a single span. Yesterday I was helping him strip off the ties, so it will be a little while before span #1 is removed.

EVERYTHING will be removed. It might not be over until June. He is planning on donating some stone and steel to local historical societies.

The city and UP are stupid...

Hillbilly demo? Sounds similar to Redneck demo: cut the bracing out, hit the end post with an excavator and knock it in the river, then drag it out. Of course, we should note the demo crew isn't as dumb as the city officials who authorized the demo contract to begin with. They are the true village idiots. They apparently don't want to strive for greatness as cities like Pittsburgh and Chicago do.

Lost a tremendous amount of respect for them today...

Hillbilly demolition. Tie cables to the top of the bridge, cut it in half and drop it. To be repeated 3 more times.....

It appears that one span collapsed. If it was a demolition, they would have started on an end. And the metal wouldn't be so twisted

When I was there this summer, the pier supporting that bridge was crumbling and falling apart. Picture #2 shows the pier fell apart, and likley collapsed, causing the span to fall.

So this raises the question, are they going to save what's left of it, or is it all going down?

Went down and took some pics...

Is it possible they are rehabilitating it? It was purchased by the city with intent of being fixed up and being put into service as a pedestrian bridge in 2002...

ONE SPAN HAS COLLAPSED! Or has been torn down- just saw it on the news with it sitting on the sand bar and a piece of equipment working on it.

I got those dates from the description section of this image: http://www.flickr.com/photos/photo-logic/3216359815/

Might I ask how we got the dates "1893 to 1901"? Since the center pier is concrete, I would suspect 1901 if the given options were solid. But someone took the plates off the bridge. I will ask the C&NWHS for a date...

I dind of like the photos in the comments. It allows me to quickly see what is going on. Just sayin'. I use the forum and not the update page mostly. And find it easier to scroll rather than redraw and click through to each page for information and photos.

I dind of like the photos in the comments. It allows me to quickly see what is going on. Just sayin'. I use the forum and not the update page mostly. And find it easier to scroll rather than redraw and click through to each page for information and photos.

Hopefully we can see this bridge as a trail in the next few years!

According to this PDF: http://www.stb.dot.gov/filings/all.nsf/0/2d0741dbe7420641852... The trail that would utilize this bridge would start at 63rd and McKinley, connecting along other trails and bridges. (Including the 5th street and Waterworks park truss bridges)

Map of the plan on page 5

More photos, This Bridge lends itself to some great photo opportunity’s.

The river levels are currently very low giving me a chance to take some close up shots of the piers and structure underneath. Discovered that there has been a fire on the deck of the bridge and barriers have been placed to keep people off.

I would say that we can look forward to more high water stages in Des Moines so it will be interesting to see what they do.

Well that was during the floods in 08, which was pretty much the worst flooding seen in years for our region. I don't know how often the river gets that high my guess would be not that often), but this bridge is just as low as a bunch of the other bridges across the Des Moines River in the city. So I think that some work on the piers (not only for better flow but they ought to be inspected and repaired if need before it is used for traffic) would be enough. It's really good that this bridge is considered for re-use, Des Moines definitely sees the potential in the adaptive reuse of abandoned/unused bridges for pedestrian usage, and I commend them for that

I just talked with Bill Stowe and this bridge is on his radar as part of Des Moines and Polk County. As you can tell it does obstruct flow during flooding. Any ideas on how to mitigate? Lifting the spans would be as expensive as tearing them out so there must be some solution. What about skinning the piers with metal to help flow? I am no engineer, we all know that, but there must be some ideas. All of the tiling going on in agricultural lands here, means that the water gets to the rivers so much more quickly. No one is really talking about that because it means fighting BIG AG. Need to get them on our side by planting habitats and ponds for filtering the water before it gets off their land.....if you know any ag people.......

It would be easy too seeing as the Des Moines Trail ends where southwest and southeast 1st street merge and the eastern end of the bridge would intersect the Neal Smith Trail perpendicularly if the bridge were to be utilized for trail use., so you could connect the trail to the other quite easily, the would have to totally revamp the bridge to make it safer, but it's do-able and I seriously hope Des Moines is considering doing just that because they already have done a spectacular job reusing/re-purposing the other unused/unfit for vehicular traffic bridges in town and this is set up perfectly to just be added to their trail network.

Wow this would be great for a walking trail!

Winter of 09

bridge during floods of 08