The bridge is on a main line that connects the port of Norfolk and the coalfields of southern West Virginia with points north, including Chicago. Since completion of the Heartland Corridor project a year ago, a lot of double-stacked container trains have been moving over this bridge each day.
The Kenova bridge is at about Mile 316.
One more thing: A world record setting train crossed this bride on Nov. 15, 1967. A 500-car coal train pulled by five locomotives left Williamson, W.Va., and crossed this bridge on its way to Portsmouth, Ohio. It was said the last car on the train started moving several minutes after the front of the train did. Whether that record still stands, I don't know.
UPDATE: Being more curious about the word "first" in the NS announcement, I checked one of my old reference books. It says the present bridge, the one in the picture above, opened in 1913. Where the "first" bridge was, I don't know. It may have been about a half mile above the existing bridge, and horizontal clearance in the channel may have been wider, but I need to check that out some more with better reference materials than what I have on the book shelf next to my computer.
I checked the two closest railroad bridges. The Sciotoville bridge, about 33 miles downstream, was finished in 1917. That's a big bridge that has an interesting history of its own. The Point Pleasant brige, about 51 miles upstream, opened in 1907.
I got to wondering once how the tax people and the corporate people assess the value of such a bridge. And I wondered how difficult it would be for a private entity such as a railroad to build such a bridge today, given the regulatory and legal climate.
5 comments:
If the ultimate authority, Wikipedia, can be trusted, my favorite bridge in Louisville opened almost 25 years earlier. In any case, we in Louisville wish the newer bridges were built like the bridges of that era.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fourteenth_Street_Bridge_%28Ohio_River%29
I now see that there claim was for the first RR Bridge at Kenova, not for the first over the Ohio river. I also found that the bridge in Louisville was rebuilt between 1916 and 1919.
In the quick and dirty research I did this morning, I found several railroad bridges that were in service before 1892, some dating back to the 1870s. And that was just a quick check. If I feel up to it, I might try to find out when the first RR bridge over the river opened.
That is a large bridge there at Kenova but I think that one at Sciotoville is bigger yet (as far as the dimensions of the truss members).
Yeah, the one at Sciotoville is huge. The problem is that it's so big, and it's in a spot where I can't get a good picture because of how the four-lane highways there are situated. If anyone knows of a good spot on a hill where I can get a high angle, or if anyone knows a landowner who will let me on his/her property to get a shot, please pass it along.
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