Stark Electric Railway/PRR Overpass
Facts
- Overview
- Lost Pratt through truss bridge over Pennsylvania Railroad on Stark Electric Railway
- Location
- Salem, Columbiana County, Ohio
- Status
- Removed but not replaced
- History
- Built 1904
- Builder
- - Detroit Bridge & Iron Works of Detroit, Michigan
- Railroads
- - Interurban
- Pennsylvania Railroad (PRR)
- Stark Electric Railway
- Design
- Pratt through truss
- Approximate latitude, longitude
- +40.90152, -80.86466 (decimal degrees)
40°54'05" N, 80°51'53" W (degrees°minutes'seconds") - Approximate UTM coordinates
- 17/511399/4527834 (zone/easting/northing)
- Inventory number
- BH 86911 (Bridgehunter.com ID)
Comments
Could the bridge have been moved ca. or after 1910 and been replaqued?
The original Detroit company was absorbed into the American Bridge Company in 1900, and reportedly American Bridge ran the Detroit plant until 1903 and then closed it. However, ca. 1910, some of the people associated with the Detroit Bridge and Iron Works formed a new company called Detroit Bridge and Steel Works, with a plant located in River Rouge, Michigan. This company used bridge plaques that had the exact same unique shape and design as the Detroit Bridge and Iron Works plaques. The Detroit Bridge and Steel Works was in turn purchased by another Detroit company, Whitehead and Kales.
I’m curious about this structure. It sure appears to have a Detroit B&I plaque, but Detroit B&I ceased to exist in 1902. In addition, there are identical spans built 1905 on a bridge in Iowa ( https://bridgehunter.com/ia/polk/inter-urban-trail/ ).
Perhaps these spans are not related, but it’s likely that they may have been purchased from a larger railroad from an unknown location. It is known that small electric railroads sometimes did this, moving spans hundreds of miles:
This page's URL is http://bridgehunter.com/oh/columbiana/bh86911/
Nathan,
That is interesting. I’ve never seen a plaque from that company. I can confirm that the Iowa bridge, with the identical portals, was there by 1905. It’s possible this bridge is completely unrelated in any way to the Iowa bridge, but judging by the financial situation most electric railroads were in, I suspect the spans were purchased from another railroad.