Pit River Bridge

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Coordinates: 40 ° 45 ′ 44 ″  N , 122 ° 19 ′ 8 ″  W.

Pit River Bridge
Pit River Bridge
The Pit River Bridge over Shasta Lake 2016, view to the northeast of the branch of the McCloud River
(filling of the reservoir was approx. 80% of the average)
Official name Veterans of Foreign Wars Memorial Bridge
use I-5.svg Interstate 5
rail bridge
Crossing of Pit River
( Shasta Lake )
place Shasta County ( California )
construction Truss bridge
( double deck bridge )
overall length 1094 m (street level)
839 m (railway level)
Longest span 192 m
height 152 m
(street level above valley floor)
opening 1942
planner Bureau of Reclamation
location
Pit River Bridge (USA)
Pit River Bridge
Pit River and Shasta Lake (bottom left)
Pit River basin map.png
p1

The Pit River Bridge is a combined road and rail bridge over Shasta Lake in Shasta County , California . The double-deck bridge was to 1942 during the construction of Shasta Dam over the valley of the Pit River built and leads to the upper level, the Interstate 5 and on the lower level a track of the Union Pacific Railroad , which also for the rail freight of the BNSF Railway used will be used by Amtrak as part of the Coast Starlight long-distance train route .

history

Pit River bridge, Shasta County, California. Notice the protective nets underneath (cut) .jpg
Construction work on Pit River bridge. Shasta County, California (cut) .jpg


Construction of the Pit River Bridge in 1941/42. The reservoir was filled from 1944, on the right in the background the old bridge of US Highway 99 over the Pit River , which is now in the lake.

Between 1938 and 1945 , the Shasta Dam was built about 25 kilometers north of Redding on the upper reaches of the Sacramento River , just below the confluence with the Pit River . It has dammed Shasta Lake since 1944 , which forms three large tributaries through the flooded ends of the Sacramento, McCloud and Pit River valleys. This made it necessary to relocate the course of US Highway 99 and the connection of the Southern Pacific from Sacramento to Oregon . To cross the eastern Pit River branch, a new bridge for road and rail traffic was built shortly after the McCloud River branch by 1942. The double-decker bridge was at that time, with a height of over 150 meters above the original course of the Pit, the highest of its kind in the world. On its lower level, it carries one of originally two tracks and on the upper level four lanes of today's Interstate 5 .

The Southern Pacific was in 1996 in the Union Pacific Railroad (UP) that the bridge today for the rail freight uses, as well as the BNSF Railway , the route rights has in UP. Furthermore, the bridge since 1971 part of the route of the long distance train Coast Starlight from Amtrak , between Los Angeles and Seattle wrong. US Highway 99 in California has been largely part of Interstate 5 since 1964, including the Pit River Bridge .

In May 1953, the 1954 Pulitzer Prize for Photography was taken on the bridge by amateur Virginia M. Schau of the rescue of a truck driver by her husband. The tractor, manned by two men, had gotten over the perimeter of the bridge and was only held by the semi-trailer , which saved the two men from falling into the depths before they were rescued one after the other with the help of a rope.

description

Freight train on the lower level of the truss of the Pit River Bridge in late 1941.

The truss bridge consists of a central tannery girder that spans the four central bridge piers with lengths of 152 m, 192 m and 152 m. This is followed by three trusses of 86 m, 86 m and 43 m in length on the north side ; For the configuration on the south side, one 86-meter less beam was used. The total length of the truss bridge is 839 m and corresponds to the length of the lower railway level. The upper level of the carriageway is supplemented on both sides by several girder bridges that form a slight S-curve with the truss bridge. At the south end, a solid wall girder spans the track, which ends here in a tunnel. At the east end, four girders of the same design form a right turn; the track underneath swerves out of the overlying guide in a slight left curve. The total length of the carriageway level is therefore over 200 m longer and is 1094 m.

Around 17,000 tons of steel were used for the superstructure , with the structural elements being manufactured by the American Bridge Company in Gary and transported almost 3,500 km to the construction site by rail. The bridge piers supporting the superstructure are made of reinforced concrete , the two central pillars being up to 110 m high; the upper level of the carriageway is 152 m above the valley floor and the total of seven pillars are almost completely flooded when the reservoir is filled to the maximum.

literature

Web links

Commons : Pit River Bridge  - Collection of Images

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c Pit River Bridge Construction. California Highways and Public Works, Vol. 19, No. 3, March 1941, pp. 14 f.
  2. ↑ a b Grading Completed on Relocation of US 99 Shasta Dam Reservoir Unit of Central Valley Project. California Highways and Public Works, Vol. 19, No. 10, October 1941, pp. 1-3 and 6th
  3. ^ Pit River Bridge: Financial Impact Study of Interstate 5 Closure from a Catastrophic Failure. California Department of Transportation, September 2012.
  4. ^ Ranjit Dhaliwal: Rescue on Pit River Bridge. The Guardian, June 12, 2013, accessed May 11, 2018.
  5. ^ Heinz-Dietrich Fischer: Key Images of American Life: Pulitzer Prize Winning Pictures. LIT Verlag Münster, 2015, ISBN 978-3-643-90518-5 , p. 122.