Hannibal Bridge (1869)

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Coordinates: 39 ° 6 ′ 46 ″  N , 94 ° 35 ′ 19 ″  W.

Hannibal Bridge
Hannibal Bridge
The Hannibal Bridge with its first superstructure, 1869
use Railway bridge
Crossing of Missouri River
place Kansas City , Missouri
construction Truss bridge with swing bridge
overall length 427 m
Longest span 76 m
Clear height 14 m ( low water )
building-costs 1.1 million US dollars
start of building 1867
opening 1869
planner Octave Chanute
closure 1917
location
Hannibal Bridge (1869) (USA)
Hannibal Bridge (1869)
Kansas City satellite map (cut) Hannibal-Bridge.jpg
Location of the former Hannibal Bridge Red circle thick.svg over the Missouri in the metropolitan area of ​​Kansas City
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The Hannibal Bridge , also Kansas City Bridge , was a single-track railroad bridge over the Missouri River in Kansas City , Missouri . The truss bridge with swing bridge was built under the direction of Octave Chanute until 1869 for the Hannibal and St. Joseph Railroad (H & StJ) and was the first bridge over the Missouri River. It contributed significantly to the development of the Kansas City metropolitan area , which is now one of the most important railroad hubs in the United States.

The Chicago, Burlington and Quincy Railroad (CB&Q) took over the eponymous railway company in 1883 and replaced the superstructure originally made of wood and iron with a pure iron structure by 1888. In 1917 the bridge was finally replaced by a new double-track steel structure , which is still used by the BNSF Railway today.

history

Connection of Kansas City to the H & StJ

The Hannibal and St. Joseph Railroad 1860, Kansas City Red circle thick.svgbottom left

From the 1830s, the area west of Independence , at the confluence of the Kansas and Missouri Rivers, developed into one of the last supply points for settlers heading west along the Santa Fe , Oregon and California Trails . The settlement Town of Kansas , which had grown to about 1500 inhabitants, was incorporated into the state of Missouri in 1853 and renamed the City of Kansas . By the late 1850s, the population had grown to over 4,000. Business people around the politician and publisher Robert T. Van Horn wanted the city therefore 1859 finished the Hannibal and St. Joseph Railroad Connect, which since 1859 Hannibal on the Mississippi River with about 80 km north of the later Kansas City nearby Saint Joseph on the Missouri River Association. After the Civil War in 1865, the President of the Chicago, Burlington and Quincy Railroad James Frederick Joy , who also controlled the H & StJ, could be won over to the project. Joy saw this as a profitable investment due to the low property prices and the possible expansion in the direction of the Gulf of Mexico , as Kansas City was previously only served from the south by the later Missouri Pacific Railroad . He convinced his Boston investors around John Murray Forbes and had the Kansas City and Cameron Railroad built as part of the H & StJ by the end of 1867, which was connected to the H & StJ in Cameron , about 50 km east of Saint Joseph.

Construction of the first bridge over the Missouri

Kansas City (above), Hannibal Bridge on the right , 1869

The location of Kansas City on the south bank of the Missouri also required the construction of the first bridge over the river, which was the greatest challenge in this remote area at the time. Joy hired the engineer and future aviation pioneer Octave Chanute , who came to Kansas City in 1866 and began preliminary investigations. Since, apart from a small foundry with a workshop in the city, there were no suitable tools, machines and transport ships for a company of this size at that time, Chanute first had to organize them and set up their own workshops and the necessary infrastructure. He designed a single-track truss bridge with a swing bridge made of wood, cast iron and wrought iron as part of the state requirements , based on European bridge constructions and construction methods, such as the Kehl Rhine Bridge, which opened in 1861 . The track level was lined with wooden planks to enable pedestrians and wagons to use it between the trains . Construction work on the bridge piers began in February 1867 and the superstructure was completed in July 1869. Chanute's assistants at the time also included the young George S. Morison , who would later become one of the leading experts on railroad bridges and who built more than 20 more bridges by 1901, including ten more over the Missouri.

Kansas City Railroad Hub

The second Hannibal Bridge , behind it the Buck O'Neil Bridge on US Highway 169, 2006

The railroad bridge accelerated the growth of Kansas City, which was reached by seven railroad lines in the late 1860s and became a major transportation hub between Chicago and the Southwest. The population was already over 30,000 in 1870 and reached 130,000 twenty years later. The Hannibal and St. Joseph Railroad merged with the Chicago, Burlington and Quincy Railroad in 1883 , which completely replaced the superstructure of the bridge by 1888. During this time, in May 1886, one of the first new iron trusses on the north side was torn from the pillars and destroyed by a tornado . Due to the increasing volume of traffic over the single-track Hannibal Bridge at the beginning of the 20th century , which was used not only by the CB&Q but also by the Chicago, Rock Island and Pacific Railroad and the Wabash Railroad as access to the Kansas City Union Station , the old bridge came - too because of the increasingly heavy locomotives - to their load limit and was replaced in 1917 by a new double-track building . The new double-decker bridge had a two-lane street level in the upper area until 1956, which was dismantled after the opening of the neighboring Buck O'Neil Bridge ; the lower level is still used today by the BNSF Railway . In terms of freight volume , the Kansas City metropolitan area is the largest rail hub in the United States today (2016), with over 300 freight trains arriving or leaving the region every day .

description

Position and clearance

The Hannibal Bridge with its first superstructure from 1869 (photo from 1873)
The Hannibal Bridge with its second superstructure from 1888 (photo from 1896)

The Hannibal Bridge was built about 2 km downstream behind the confluence of the Kansas River in the Missouri River, just beyond the apex of a loop of the meandering Missouri. Since there were no records of the water levels in the river, these were recorded daily during the construction phase and compared with the high level of the great flood of 1844, which was determined from surveys and surveys; this was about 10 m above low water . The bridge was then designed with a reserve of a few meters for a clearance height of 14 m.

superstructure

The superstructure of the bridge consisted of seven truss girders with an underlying track made of wood, cast iron and wrought iron , with a girder made entirely of iron serving as a swing bridge over the navigation channel. Starting from the abutment on the south side - on the impact slope of the meander - these had lengths of 21, 40, 110 (swing bridge), 61, 76, 61 and 54 m. On the north side, a 725 m long wooden trestle bridge was used as an access over the flood plain . The first 21-meter carrier had only a low half-timbered (pony truss) , the subsequent and the bridge on the north shore final shorter parallelgurtige truss were as wide-meshed grid support (trellis girder truss) run and the longer the stand trusses with curved top flange . Except for the swing bridge, the upper chords and posts of the trusses were made of wood and the lower chords were made of wrought iron.

Substructure

The superstructure rested on eight pillars made of sandstone, with the concrete foundations of the four river pillars on the south side being erected using open caissons directly on the bedrock of the river bed, which sloped towards the north at a depth of 5 to 15 m below low water; a 10 m deep pile foundation was used for the remaining pillars . The foundations had rectangular areas of 20 m × 6 m and the masonry built on them had a height of 14 m above low water. The round pillar of the swing bridge had a diameter of 9 m, with a foundation of 12 m in diameter. It had a wooden walkway on both sides in the direction of the river, which served as protection against ice drift and as a storage area for the truss when the swing bridge was open. The passable opening was about 48 m on both sides.

Conversions and two-track new construction

Construction of the bridge piers of the new double-track Hannibal Bridge in 1916, the old bridge was dismantled by the end of 1917

During the renovation of the superstructure, which was carried out up to 1888, all trusses were replaced by iron stud frames with parallel straps; at the swing bridge the straight upper chord was slightly inclined towards the ends. For the new double-track steel building , which was completed by 1917, the CB&Q only used two 102 m long parallel-chorded stud frameworks and a 137 m long swing bridge in a similar design, with the upper chord slightly inclined as in the previous building. In order to realize the higher load capacity, additional posts and additional longitudinal and transverse struts were integrated in the lower area in all three trusses, whereby the truss fields were again subdivided and reinforced (Baltimore truss) . The street level, which existed until the mid-1950s, was run halfway up within the truss. Only girder bridges made of solid steel girders of lengths between 23 m and 37 m were used for the access to both levels of the main bridge .

Schematic drawing of the Hannibal Bridge from 1917, until 1956, double-decker bridge with upper street level.

Web links

Commons : Hannibal Bridge (1869)  - Collection of pictures, videos and audio files

literature

Individual evidence

  1. ^ A b c Octave Chanute, George S. Morison: The Kansas City Bridge: With an Account of the Regimen of the Missouri River, and a Description of Methods Used for Founding in That River. D. Van Nostrand, New York 1870, pp. 9-18.
  2. ^ Louis W. Potts, George FW Hauck: Frontier Bridge Building: The Hannibal Bridge at Kansas City, 1867-1869. In: Missouri Historical Review. Vol. 89, No. 2, January 1995, pp. 139-161, here pp. 139-147.
  3. ^ Louis W. Potts, George FW Hauck: Frontier Bridge Building: The Hannibal Bridge at Kansas City, 1867-1869. In: Missouri Historical Review. Vol. 89, No. 2, January 1995, pp. 139-161, here pp. 147-161.
  4. ^ Clayton B. Fraser: Nebraska City Bridge. Historic American Engineering Record, HAER No. NE-2, Denver, Colorado 1986, pp. 10-21.
  5. ^ Hannibal Bridge Tornado Damage. ( September 1, 2018 memento on the Internet Archive ) William Hyde Photograph Collection, The Kansas City Public Library.
  6. ↑ Iron Bridges vs. Tornadoes. In: Engineering News. Vol. 30, October 5, 1893, p. 277.
  7. ^ A b c A New Bridge Over The Missouri River at Kansas City. In: Railway Age Gazette. Vol. 59, No. 7, 1915, p. 284.
  8. ^ Hannibal Bridge / Second Hannibal Bridge. HistoricBridges.org, accessed August 28, 2018.
  9. ^ Steve Lowery: Top Cities for Global Trade. In: Global Trade. September 27, 2016, accessed September 1, 2018.
  10. ^ Octave Chanute, George S. Morison: The Kansas City Bridge: With an Account of the Regimen of the Missouri River, and a Description of Methods Used for Founding in That River. D. Van Nostrand, New York 1870, pp. 26-28.
  11. ^ Octave Chanute, George S. Morison: The Kansas City Bridge: With an Account of the Regimen of the Missouri River, and a Description of Methods Used for Founding in That River. D. Van Nostrand, New York 1870, pp. 29-31, 78-82, and the like. 86.
  12. ^ Octave Chanute, George S. Morison: The Kansas City Bridge: With an Account of the Regimen of the Missouri River, and a Description of Methods Used for Founding in That River. D. Van Nostrand, New York 1870, pp. 29-36, 39-53, and the like. 67-76.
  13. ^ Glenn A. Knoblock: Historic Iron and Steel Bridges in Maine, New Hampshire and Vermont. McFarland, Jefferson 2012, ISBN 978-0-7864-4843-2 , pp. 36 f.
  14. ^ The New Burlington Bridge at Kansas City. In: Railway Age Gazette. Vol. 62, No. 23, 1917, pp. 1181-1185.
This version was added to the list of articles worth reading on December 8, 2018 .