Lower Landsdown Road Bridge

Andrew,

I was worried, I thought there was a new engineer. Glad to hear the attitude hasn't changed. The Mercer County engineer is on a publicly stated mission to get rid of all of the Mercer County trusses

If the county engineer would be interested, I'd be willing to help. Although, I don't think the rules would allow it, arm's length, no collusion, etc. I'd be willing to fix it at cost or less if I can get the conservancy groups involved.

Same thing on the wing walls of Hamp.

Regards,

Art S.

Art - the old bridge on Hampden Rd appears to be open. I can verify this in a couple days.

https://www.co.hunterdon.nj.us/closings.htm

To my sorrow, I read this and found that the ancient 1868 Shoddy Mill Rd bridge on the Hunterdon/Warren County line across the Musconetcong River was closed in July because some IDIOT took too large a vehicle over it. Most of you know this one as the New Hampton Bridge.

The little one way down on Hamp Rd I don't know about. It's a long fun drive into the very rural part of the county to get there.

The new modern bridge on Hampden Rd, a short way north of this one on Landsdown, crosses the Raritan where it flows strongly. However, that one is a modern massive tank of a bridge, so I expect it did quite well.

It can be a bit confusing living here. We have rivers and big creeks and streams that meander everywhere, so it's pretty common for a road to have several bridge.

Those are the only "hamp" bridges I recall off the top of my head.

Considering how instantaneous the flood was, and how many giant trees were in the water, the damage to my favorite little bridge is fairly minimal. One floor beam bent, one floor beam had the lower "I" nearly torn off. No other damage visible from a quick inspection. A woman out walking her dog, who lives just down the street, told me the county told them this bridge will probably be closed for 2 years or more. And I happen to know the guy in charge, the county engineer, who is a huge fan of old bridges and has done amazing work restoring the old iron we have in Hunterdon County NJ. But the main roads come first. The rail bridge just downstream is open and running; it's much newer, much stronger, and is much higher above the river. Capoolong Creek flows right to left in my pictures; it feeds the South Branch of the Raritan River a quarter mile away. The entire area flooded to a considerable depth. A short modern bridge over Capoolong, on Sidney Rd about half a mile to the SW, is also closed indefinitely.

I suspect it has to do with the substructure/abutments. If you do take a road trip for photos, please get Hamp road as well.

Regards,

Art S.

Lower Landsdown Road is still closed from storm Ida. I want to get down there with a camera and see if this bridge is OK. There was a lot of flooding in Hunterdon County; the Payne Road bridge is also closed along with several others. Lowthorpe's creation by the damn in Clinton survived just fine, having just been repaired a week or so before the storm. Stanton Station Road bridge is open, Kucineck Road bridge I don't know about. The one up on the Musconetcong and the ancient one in Glen Gardner I don't know about either. Quite a number of old railroad bridges in the area too. We've got a lot of very old iron bridges around here, several of them lovingly restored, and we had a lot of short term flooding.

Ah, missed it. I need to recalibrate my eyeballs, they were off by 3 degrees.

By the way, this one of two skewed phoenix column bridges in NJ, Hibernia Mine Railroad being the other: http://www.hmdb.org/marker.asp?marker=60366

Regards,

Art S.

Check HistoricBridges.org :) Its actually a 17 degree skew. Extremely rare among Phoenix column bridges.

I didn't notice it mentioned but this bridge has a slight skew to it. Probably 20 degrees or so. I noticed it while driving over it but you can sort of see it in some of the pictures.

Regards,

Art S.