Photos, news and stuff

I stopped by the river at Huntington yesterday and saw that this boat had already passed me. From the distance, I couldn't identify it, and I was pretty sure I hadn't seen it before. From zooming in on the photo, the name appears to be the Claude R.

So another day, another sighting of a boat I hadn't seen before.

###

The Fort Steuben Bridge between Steubenville, Ohio, and Weirton, W.Va., came down in February. A piece of steel from that bridge is in Mississippi, where it's being examined and compared to modern steel.

###

At South Point, Ohio, it looks like The Point industrial park is moving ahead on plans to become a shipping point where cargo can be offloaded from barge to truck or rail.

###

It was a small demolition, but still ...

An approach ramp to the bridge between Madison, Ind., and Milton, Ky., was taken down last week so a temporary one could be built as part of construction for the new bridge there. The new bridge is scheduled to open later this year.

The scheduling of completion could be fun, depending on the election schedules in Indiana and Kentucky. Here in Huntington, W.Va., a new bridge connecting the downtown area with Ohio was scheduled to open in December and be named for then-Senator Robert C. Byrd. But Byrd was running for re-election and needed an excuse to give a campaign speech in Huntington, so the West Virginia Department of Transportation paid the contractor extra money to finish the bridge so it could be dedicated and opened to traffic before the election, I mean, in time to help Ohioans shop in downtown Huntington. In effect, lots of taxpayer money was used as a campaign donation to Byrd.

###

Here's video of the Madison bridge ramp being dropped with explosives.

###

Down at the far end of the Ohio River, the bridge at Cairo, Ill., will have some temporary lane closures this week.What I like about this is something you never see in my part of the river when there are lane closures because of bridge inspections or minor repairs. I like the sentence beginning, "Farmers needing to move oversize equipment across the bridge..." We don't have a whole lot of interstate movement of oversize farm equipment up here.

###

Not a news item, but Joe Schneid in Louisville has posted some nice photos and a video of the Lelia C. Shearer on Flickr. Here's one. They're all worth checking out.

Meanwhile, Barry Griffith has a nice photo of a boat on the lower river. I like this photo because it shows driftwood on the river bank.

###

I just looked up some information on the Claude R. It's 100 feet long and 26 feet wide, or less than half the dimensions of any one of the barges it's pushing. Other than the pilothouse, it's one deck. It's probably not a place for a deckhand who needs space.