Henderson Bridge

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Coordinates: 37 ° 50 ′ 41 ″  N , 87 ° 35 ′ 41 ″  W.

Henderson Bridge
Henderson Bridge
use Railway bridge
Crossing of Ohio River
place Henderson , Kentucky and
Vanderburgh Counties , Indiana
Entertained by CSX Transportation
construction Truss bridge
overall length approx. 6 km (including driveways)
964 m (main bridge)
width 11 m
Longest span 204 m
Construction height 31 m
Clear height 27 m
start of building May 13, 1931
completion December 31, 1932
opening January 1, 1933
planner JM Salmon (draft)
WH Courtenay (chief engineer)
location
Henderson Bridge (USA)
Henderson Bridge

The Henderson Bridge is a single-track railroad bridge over the Ohio River between Henderson , Kentucky and Vanderburgh County , Indiana . The steel truss bridge from 1932 goes back to one of the first railroad bridges over the Ohio, which the Louisville and Nashville Railroad (L&N) built until 1885. Since the approach to the bridge in Indiana is several kilometers across the Ohio floodplain , the total length is almost six kilometers. At the beginning of the 20th century, L&N recorded up to 100 trains per day on its connection and existed as a Class I rail company until 1982. At that time, it merged with the Seaboard Coast Line Railroad to form the Seaboard System Railroad , which was later merged into CSX Transportation . which the bridge uses today for freight traffic .

history

First bridge 1885

The first L&N railroad bridge over the Ohio near Henderson in 1893

The railway network of the Louisville and Nashville Railroad (L&N), founded in Kentucky in 1850 , reached south of the Ohio in the early 1880s to Cincinnati in the east and New Orleans in the south. For the connection to St. Louis in the east and to connect to the network of the Chicago and Eastern Illinois Railroad in the north to Chicago , the Ohio had to be crossed, which the L&N realized with a ferry connection between Evansville and Henderson . Since the transfer was very time-consuming and had to be partially discontinued in winter, the L&N built a single-track railway bridge over the river at Henderson in Kentucky by 1885. The bridge reduced the travel time for passenger trains between St. Louis and Nashville by several hours to 12 and from Chicago to Nashville to 16 hours; the travel time on Interstate 65 is now about 7 hours for the latter connection.

The first Henderson Bridge spanned the Ohio, which was almost a kilometer wide, with 13 parallel - belted lattice girders between 36 and 76 meters in length and with a central girder 159 meters above the shipping channel. The high bridge was flanked by extensive ascending driveways. On the Indiana side, this was mainly achieved through wooden trestle bridges , which here reached a length of almost five kilometers over the floodplain . On the Kentucky side, this consisted of an iron viaduct and girder bridges over several streets in the urban area of ​​Henderson. The bridge developed into a major transportation hub and was also used by the Illinois Central Railroad for the connection between Evansville and Hopkinsville ; the volume of traffic rose to 100 trains a day at the beginning of the 20th century.

Second bridge in 1932

2005 aerial photo of the second L&N railway bridge from 1932, on the right the city of Henderson and on the left the floodplain of the Ohio River in Indiana (view upstream)

In order to be able to keep up with the increased demands on the necessary load bearing capacity of bridges, L&N was forced to think about a new building at the end of the 1920s. The weights of the ever more powerful locomotives and the loads being transported rose rapidly and the first Henderson Bridge was only intended for the load of two 80 ton steam locomotives (2 × Consolidation type including tender , approx. Cooper E10 ); the standard in the 1910s was 2 × 190 tons (Cooper E60). The new bridge was therefore designed for a load capacity of 2 × 270 ton locomotives (approx. Cooper E80) in order to be prepared for future weight increases, which corresponds roughly to today's standard.

The stone pillars of the first bridge were still in excellent condition, but were not wide enough for a double-track expansion and, moreover, the requirements of the War Department required a greater clearance for shipping. The bridge engineer for the Louisville and Nashville Railroad J. M. Salmon therefore designed a double-track bridge with a central 204-meter truss , which is still one of the three longest simple trusses between two supports in railway bridges ; the record has been held by the Metropolis Bridge at 220 meters since 1917 . The second bridge was built about 30 meters downstream from the first between May 1931 and December 1932 under the direction of chief engineer W. H. Courtenay, who had been involved in the construction of the first bridge as assistant to the liaison engineer 47 years earlier . The manufacture of the steel elements and the erection of the superstructure was carried out by the American Bridge Company ; the work was completed on December 31, and the bridge was officially opened on New Year's Day 1933; the old bridge including the bridge piers was then completely torn down by the end of 1933.

The access on the Kentucky side was replaced in the course of the new construction by a railway embankment, which is interrupted by several underpasses for the streets in the urban area of ​​Henderson. The several kilometers long wooden trestle bridges along the floodplain on the Indiana side were largely reused because they had been renewed in 1919. The six lattice girders over the Ohio were adequately dimensioned for double-track use, but the girder and trestle bridges of the driveways were only expanded to single-track at that time; all reinforced concrete pillars - including the pile foundation - were prepared for an extension to include a second track, but the extension was never implemented.

In 1946 there was a large-scale overhaul of the Indiana driveway, in which the wooden trestle bridges were replaced over their entire length by reinforced concrete structures and increased by one meter. The traffic volume at that time was an average of 50 trains a day. In 1982, L&N merged with Seaboard Coast Line Railroad to form Seaboard System Railroad , which in turn merged with CSX Transportation , the current operator of the bridge.

description

The Ohio River between Evansville (top) and Henderson (bottom) in April 2010 (left) and during the Mississippi flood in May 2011 (right). The Henderson Bridge ( Full horizontal bar red.png) crosses the Ohio above Henderson and then passes still about 5 km above the flood area north to Evansville.

The Hederson Bridge is divided into the 964 meter long main bridge over the Ohio and the subsequent elongated access roads with a gradient of about 1 ‰, making the bridge a total of about 6 kilometers. From the Kentucky side in the east, the main bridge consists of two girder bridges 37 meters in length, followed by five truss girders with a curved top chord and track below (150 m, 204 m, 3 × 150 m), which are designed as strut trusses with posts (Warren truss ) are executed. This is followed by a 72-meter-long parallel-belt girder with an overhead track on the Indiana bank. The main bridge rests on eight power pillars of reinforced concrete and the abutment on the Kentucky-side, which forms the connection to the railway embankment in the city of Henderson. 18,000 tons of steel were used for the bridge, the longest truss weighs 4125 tons. The clear height of the superstructure is around 27 meters at normal water level.

On the Indiana side, 57 girder bridges between 8 and 37 meters in length - 25 of which are 30 meters in length - over the Ohio flood plain there, also rest on reinforced concrete pillars and form an approximately 1.4 kilometer curve to the north. This is followed by the Trestle Bridge, newly built in 1946, of almost 4 kilometers in the direction of Evansville . This consists of more than 2000 reinforced concrete piles, about 15 meters long, which were driven into the ground and on which 628 concrete slabs rest, which support the ballast track bed .

literature

Web links

Commons : Henderson Bridge  - collection of pictures, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c d e f g Louisville & Nashville Completes Outstanding Bridge. In: Railway Age. Vol. 94, No. 18, 1933, pp. 658-662.
  2. ^ A b Kincaid A. Herr: The Louisville and Nashville Railroad, 1850-1963. University Press of Kentucky, 2000, ISBN 978-0-8131-9318-2 . Pp. 76-79.
  3. ^ Andrzej S. Nowak, Anna M. Rakoczy: Development of System Reliability Models for Railway Bridges. Mid-America Transportation Center, University of Nebraska-Lincoln, 2012, p. 26 f.
  4. ^ Wai-Fah Chen, Lian Duan: Bridge Engineering Handbook. CRC Press, 1999, ISBN 0-8493-7434-0 , pp. 23-8 f.
  5. ^ Kincaid A. Herr: The Louisville and Nashville Railroad, 1850-1963. University Press of Kentucky, 2000, ISBN 978-0-8131-9318-2 . P. 248 and 252.
  6. ^ A b New Approach to a River Crossing. In: Louisville & Nashville Employes' Magazine. Vol. 22, No. 1, 1946, pp. 4-6 and 14th
  7. ^ A b New Approach Marches On. In: Louisville & Nashville Employes' Magazine. Vol. 22, No. 8, 1946, p. 4 f.