Sibley Railroad Bridge

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Sibley Railroad Bridge
Sibley Railroad Bridge
use railway bridge
Crossing of Missouri River
location Sibley , Missouri
entertained by BNSF Railway
construction Truss Bridge and Trestle Bridge
overall length 1244 m
Longest span 121 m
clear height 26 m (low water)
building-costs $ 770,000 (1888) $
1.3 million (1915)
opening 1888, 1915
planner Albert A Robinson (1888)
Octave Chanute (1888)
Charles FW Felt (1915)
Albert F Robinson (1915)
position
coordinates 39° 10′ 47″  N , 94° 10′ 45″  W Coordinates: 39° 10′ 47″  N , 94° 10′ 45″  W
Sibley Railroad Bridge (USA)
OSM Sibley Railroad Bridge.png
Location of the bridge over the Missouri Red circle thick.svgat Sibley, south of the former meander of the river , Jackass Bend , which can still be seen along the county line
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The Sibley Railroad Bridge is a single-track railroad bridge built by the US Class 1 railroad company BNSF Railway over the lower reaches of the Missouri River . It is located about 35 kilometers east of Kansas City near the eponymous town of Sibley where the Missouri River forms the boundary between Jackson County and Ray County in the US state of Missouri .

The first bridge opened here in 1888 as part of the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Railway (AT&SF) rail network extension from Kansas City to Chicago . The wild Missouri, which was still unregulated at the time, was a strongly meandering river, especially on its lower reaches, which made extensive hydraulic engineering measures necessary for decades to avoid changing the course of the river at the bridge site. With the development of ever more powerful steam locomotives at the beginning of the 20th century, the wrought -iron truss bridge reached its load limit, which required replacing the superstructure with a steel structure for higher loads. From 1911 to 1915, the trusses of the main bridge and the trestle bridge of the northern approach were gradually replaced along the 1.2 kilometer long structure during ongoing operations. AT&SF merged with BNSF in 1995, which operates the bridge, which has remained unchanged since 1915, as part of its main transcontinental route between Southern California and Chicago for rail freight . Dating back to AT&SF, this rail corridor is now known as the Southern Transcon and is the primary route for BNSF 's intermodal freight operations. The Amtrak long-distance Southwest Chief also crosses the bridge. Average traffic across the bridge in 2017 was 70-75 trains per day.

story

Expansion of AT&SF until the mid-1880s

The towns along the Red pog.svgAT &SF Mainline , now part of the BNSF 's Southern Transcon rail corridor (freight runs through Amarillo , the Southwest Chief still through Raton Pass ). Black pog.svgBlackMountain.svg

The Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Railway (AT&SF) had its beginnings in central America, where it began connecting the eponymous cities of Atchison and Topeka , Kansas in 1859. With the expansion of the route network to the southwest through Colorado and New Mexico , the intended destination Santa Fe was included in the company name in the 1860s . The company reached Albuquerque in 1880 and continued to expand westward into California and southward to the Gulf of Mexico by the mid-1880s . The Missouri River provided a natural barrier to expansion into the northern and eastern states of the Midwest , but also deterred railroads from expanding into Kansas. It was not until 1869 that the first railway bridges were built across the river, such as the Hannibal Bridge in Kansas City (1869), the Wabash Bridge in Saint Charles (1871) or the Omaha Bridge in Omaha (1872), but these were under the control of other railway companies. Kansas City was AT&SF's main transhipment point with the Northeastern railroad networks, but with the expansion of other companies into Kansas in the early 1880s, AT&SF President William Barstow Strong (1881-1889) set about expanding its own route network from Kansas to Chicago . Strong wanted to create the most direct and fastest connection to Chicago with his chief engineer Albert A. Robinson . Strong acquired the Chicago and St. Louis Railway between Chicago and Pekin in Illinois in 1886 and had Robinson plan the course of the newly founded subsidiary Chicago, Santa Fe and California Railway , which runs more than 500 kilometers from Kansas City to Streator almost as the crow flies should (therefore also referred to as an airline ).

First railway bridge at Sibley 1888

The bridge with the superstructure from 1888

For the largest bridges along the route, Robinson hired civil engineer and later aviation pioneer Octave Chanute , who had already built the Hannibal Bridge in 1869. Together they planned crossings across the Missouri, the Grand , the Des Moines , the Mississippi, and the Illinois . According to the specifications of the War Department , shipping traffic on the Missouri and Mississippi was not to be impeded, which Chanute ensured with a swing bridge on the Mississippi Bridge in Fort Madison and with a high construction with sufficient headroom above the river on the Sibley Railroad Bridge. The Missouri Bridge required extensive access roads to carry the track nearly 90 feet (28 meters) above low tide, which meant that the mostly wrought-iron bridge stretched 1.2 kilometers in length, supplemented by a railroad embankment across the northeast alluvial plain of the Missouri River Valley.

In order to realize a route that was as direct as possible, the plan was to cross the strongly meandering Missouri between the meandering rivers Jackass Bend ( hanging edge on the north bank) and Sibley Bend (hanging edge on the south bank) north of Sibley (see under course of the Missouri ). However, soil surveys conducted along the Missouri River Valley in January 1887 showed that bedrock was mostly only accessible at a depth of almost 20 meters. However, below the meander of the Sibley Bend River , the bedrock rose to a depth of less than 10 metres. The presence of larger boulders above the elevation suggested the presence of a terminal moraine , marking the terminus of an Ice Age glacial advance that shaped the bedrock profile of the northern side of the river valley here. It was therefore decided to take a slight detour in the route to Sibley and erected a truss bridge at the lower end of Sibley Bend , which is only weak today due to hydraulic engineering measures . Upstream, Jackass Bend is an oxbow lake , but it still marks the boundary between Jackson County and Ray County . The bridge articulated from southwest to northeast into a short girder, seven truss girders totaling 610 meters (2,000 ft) in length, followed by a 580-metre-long iron trestle bridge . Then followed another 1.1 km long wooden Trestle Bridge, which initially curved to the right and then ran in a straight line to the east; it was filled a little later to form a railway embankment. The grade along the approach across the northeast alluvial plain was 8‰ and on the south bank of the Missouri the bridge's track level was at ground level. The truss bridge rested on eight up to 35 meter high bridge piers made of sandstone, most of which were erected directly on the bedrock using caissons . Construction work began in April 1887 and was completed after just 293 days in January of the following year.

Extension of the Southern Transcon and new bridge superstructure 1915

AT&SF route network from 1904. The route from Kansas City to Chicago, opened in 1888, and the Belen Cutoff, built until 1907, are highlighted in red (the original does not yet exist on the map).

At the beginning of the 20th century, steam locomotives became more and more powerful and heavier. In addition, traffic on the important main route between Chicago and southern California increased steadily. During the presidency of Edward Payson Ripley (1896-1920), the AT&SF modernized the main line and partially doubled it. The 1903-1907 Belen Cutoff also connected the Pecos branch line running through Amarillo , Texas to the main line over the Raton Pass , which was connected south of Albuquerque in Belen. This made it possible to bypass the up to 3.5% inclines over the Raton Pass. Freight traffic to southern California still runs along this connection via the Abo Canyon with maximum gradients of 1.3%. Mainly AT&SF passenger trains - such as the Super Chief , which has been in service since 1936 - later used the old route over the Raton Pass. The resulting rail corridor is now known as the Southern Transcon and is one of the most important transcontinental rail links in the United States. As part of the modernization, many bridges had to be replaced with structures for higher loads. In Sibley, the new construction of a double-track bridge was examined as a straight extension of the north-eastern railway embankment in order to avoid the existing curves to the old bridge. However, modernizing the existing structure while reusing the old bridge piers was more cost-effective. Although the bridge piers did not allow for a new superstructure for two tracks, the expansion of the line to two tracks up to the river crossing and the use of a track loop on the bridge was initially classified as sufficient; if necessary, a new building could always be used later.

The bridge with the new superstructure, shown on a postcard from around 1915

In addition to replacing the superstructure, the original gradient of the north-eastern access road was to be reduced to 5 ‰ and the railway embankment was to be expanded for two tracks. This required raising, lengthening and widening the embankment and raising the Trestle Bridge. Since all work had to be carried out while traffic was running, with around 16 trains crossing the bridge during the day, the construction work extended over several years from September 1911 to July 1915. First, weather-related damage to the upper area of ​​the bridge piers was repaired and some of them modified as well as the two abutments for the new superstructure. Then, with the help of gantry cranes , the original three large parallel belted Whipple trusses ( after the inventor Squire Whipple , 1804-1888) of the main opening over the Missouri were replaced by modern semi-parabolic girders and the adjacent smaller trusses were replaced one after the other. Then the embankment had to be raised in stages before the replacement of the Trestle Bridge could finally begin.

View of the portal of the truss bridge, below the ballast track bed with the tracks lying one inside the other , 1983

A notable innovation on the truss bridge was the use of a ballasted track bed on a wooden substructure, which significantly reduced track maintenance costs in the long term. The planning and execution was carried out under the direction of AT&SF engineers Charles FW Felt (chief engineer) and Albert F. Robinson (bridge engineer); Robinson also later designed AT&SF's new Mississippi Bridge at Fort Madison (1927). The American Bridge Company fabricated the new steel superstructure erected by the Missouri Valley Bridge and Iron Co. AT&SF workers carried out the work on the embankment and the new Steel Trestle Bridge.

Taken over by the BNSF Railway in 1995

With the expansion of the road network in the USA, passenger and freight traffic increasingly shifted from the railways to the roads, which made the large railway networks in North America increasingly unprofitable from the 1960s and subsequently led to several bankruptcies and mergers of the railway companies. The Santa Fe Industries holding company was founded in 1967 in order to position itself more broadly across other economic sectors . After a failed merger with the Southern Pacific Company to form the Santa Fe Pacific Corporation , AT&SF was merged with the Burlington Northern Railroad in 1995 to form today's BNSF Railway (Burlington Northern and Santa Fe Railway). In the early 1990s, AT&SF began extensive double-track expansion of the more than 800-kilometer route between Southern California and Lake Michigan , which was continued by BNSF. The Sibley Railroad Bridge is now one of two remaining single track sections and is used by 70-75 trains daily (2017). The BNSF only operates rail freight , passenger transport in the USA was completely taken over by the National Railroad Passenger Corporation founded in 1971 , known by the brand name Amtrak , until the early 1980s . The AT&SF Super Chief long-distance train that crossed the bridge was operated by Amtrak as Southwest Limited from 1974 and eventually as Southwest Chief from 1984 . Like freight, it uses the BNSF 's Southern Transcon , but runs between Kansas City and Albuquerque along the old AT&SF main line over the Raton Pass .

description

overall view

The Sibley Railroad Bridge is perpendicular to the direction of flow of the Missouri and extends between the abutments from southwest to northeast over 1244 m. The structure is divided starting from the Sibley bank into a beam bridge of 85.6 m in length, followed by a truss bridge spanning the river bed six single -span girders with a total length of 548.5 m and a final 609.9 m long trestle bridge over the alluvium of the Missouri River Valley. The steel construction from 1915, weighing 8700 t, rests on the two abutments and nine bridge piers made of sandstone and concrete, as well as 15 scaffolding piers made of steel. On the Sibley bank the track level is at ground level, on the truss bridge it lies horizontally at 28 m above low water and then runs with a gradient of 5 ‰ over the Trestle bridge. The subsequent embankment, which is up to 17 m high and has the same gradient, then curves to the right before running in a straight line about three kilometers east across the alluvium to the Fishing River.

zoom in and view information about the image
Schematic drawings of the 1888 (top) and 1915 (bottom) Sibley Railroad Bridge. The Missouri runs east below the truss bridge, and the Trestle Bridge to the right spans the floodplain to the north. Specifications in Anglo-American units feet (′) and inches (″), not to scale.
zoom in and view information about the image
Panorama of the Sibley Railroad Bridge taken in April 2021 (looking west)

truss bridge

Since the modernization of the bridge in the 1910s, the structure begins on the south side with a three-span girder bridge made of girders of 24.5 m and two times 30.3 m in length, since the 61.0 m long truss girder originally following the first short girder was also replaced by two new solid wall beams . To do this, the first bridge pillar had to be raised and another concrete pillar (1b) erected. The sequence of the six truss girders that followed remained unchanged in relation to the spans , since the bridge piers 2-8 from 1885 were still used. With the exception of piers 2 and 8, these were built directly on the bedrock by means of caissons , which lie at depths of 9–12 m below low water. The stream pillars rise up to 26 m above the water and have 7-10 m high foundations, with base areas of up to 19 m × 8 m (pillars 3 and 4). As a result, the largest pillar 5 reaches a height of 35.2 m from the lower edge of the foundation. The superstructure is divided from piers 2 to 5 into three 120.7 m long semi-parabolic girders with a track below, which are designed as special post trusses. This design, known as the Pennsylvania truss , was developed by the Pennsylvania Railroad and was mainly used for railway bridges until the 1930s. Additional posts and additional longitudinal and transverse bracing in the lower area further subdivide and strengthen the latticework fields. With higher loads, the design was more material-saving than older truss constructions, which was important for minimizing the dead weight, especially with large spans. Between pillars 5 and 8, there are then three parallel lattice girders with overhead track, with lengths of 75.3 m and two times 52.6 m in length. The longer one is a simple post truss and the two shorter ones are strut trusses with posts. The width of the trusses is 6.4 m for the three long ones and 4.9 m for the three shorter ones, whereby the distance between the central axes of the trusses is always given.

Trestle Bridge

North Side Trestle Bridge , 2017

The truss bridge is followed over the northern alluvial plain by a 609.9 m long trestle bridge (scaffolding pillar viaduct) made of 30 girders supported by 14 lattice masts or trusses , about 14 m wide , and two narrow steel piers at each end (one on the last stone pillar No. 8 of the truss bridge and one in front of the northern abutment). The regular succession of 27.4 m long girders between the pylons and 13.7 m long girders above the pylons is supplemented by a 22.9 m long girder, which forms the connection to the truss bridge, and two 18.4 m girders Length towards the northern abutment between which the last narrow steel pillar stands. The 14 lattice masts and the last steel pillar each rest on four or two concrete bases, with two of the bases being connected transversely to the longitudinal axis of the bridge by a narrow concrete wall to form a foundation. These are anchored in the ground by means of pile foundations and vary in height in such a way that when using identical lattice masts, the slight differences in height over the alluvium can be compensated for and the gradient of the track level can be realised. The beam girders consist of two parallel solid wall girders at a distance of about 3 m, whereby the girders longer than 20 m are higher than the shorter girders, which in turn are supported on the higher girders. This circumstance caused the last lattice mast to tilt slightly, since the girders following the abutment have the same height as the girder on the mast.

River course changes of the Missouri at the bridge site

Shifting of the Missouri riverbed in the vicinity of the bridge site between 1879 ( Red04.pngorange) and 1954 ( Blue05.pngblue)
Course of the Missouri River on a 1965 USGS map, the Jackass Bend meander breach was completed by the United States Army Corps of Engineers in 1957 and the course of the river has remained unchanged since.

By the late 19th century, the Missouri was a wild, unregulated river, transporting over 300 million tons of bedload annually , earning it the nickname Big Muddy . As a result, its lower reaches in particular was a strongly meandering river, with a constantly changing river course in the Missouri River Valley, which was about eight kilometers wide on average. The Jackass Bend River, located upstream from Sibley, was migrating eastward toward its future location even before the first bridge was built, prompting AT&SF to build several levees and bank fortifications on the east bank of the river bend beginning in 1887. This was the start of a river engineering program that continued in stages until 1909 , the cost of which totaled over $ 340,000 . In the early 20th century, the United States Army Corps of Engineers began extensive river defenses between Sioux City and St. Louis . In addition, between 1937 and 1963, several barrages were built on the upper reaches of the Missouri, which reduced the amount of sediment transported to less than 25%. As part of the Bank Stabilization and Navigation Project (BSNP), the course of the river was then straightened until the 1980s, with an artificial meander breakthrough of Jackass Bend being created above Sibley in 1957 and the river meander becoming an oxbow lake . The course of the Missouri has remained unchanged around Sibley since then. A special feature of the riverbed at the bridge site today is a sandbank between pillars 4 and 5, which divides the course of the river into two side arms at low water. Despite the barrages on the upper reaches, due to the straightening of the Missouri, there are sometimes high water levels, even with the discharge quantities regulated today , which can lead to large-scale flooding in extreme weather conditions in the flood season. During the largest Missouri flood of the 20th century in 1993, the previous highs from 1844 were partially exceeded in the lower reaches. Chanute designed the bridge's superstructure in 1885 to have a headroom of 50  ft (15.2  m ) above the high water level of the 1844 Missouri Flood (about 11 m above low tide), which was here reduced to about three feet during the Great Flood of 1993 was just reached, but did not endanger the structure.

literature

web links

Commons : Sibley Railroad Bridge  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Remarks

  1. ↑ JM Meade: Memoir of Albert Alonzo Robinson. In: Transactions of the American Society of Civil Engineers. Vol. 83, 1919-20, pp. 2322-2324.
  2. ^ a b Keith L. Bryant Jr., Fred W. Frailey: History of the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Railway. university of Nebraska Press, 2020, ISBN 978-1-4962-1410-2 , pp. 117–121.
  3. ↑ William E. Connelley, A Standard History of Kansas and Kansans. Vol. 3, Lewis, Chicago 1918, pp. 1285–1289, here p. 1288 ( digitized ).
  4. ↑ a b Robert W. Jackson, Clayton B. Fraser: Fort Madison Bridge, Spanning Mississippi River at US Highway 61, Fort Madison, Lee County, IA. Historic American Engineering Record, HAER IA-62, Washington, DC 1995.
  5. ^ a b The Sibley Bridge. In: Railroad Gazette. Vol. 20, February 17, 1888, p. 104.
  6. ^ a b The Sibley Bridge Over the Missouri. In: The Railroad and Engineering Journal. Vol. 62, No. 3, 1888, p. 134.
  7. ↑ Octave Chanute, John F Wallace, William H Breithaupt: The Sibley Bridge. In: Transactions of the American Society of Civil Engineers. Vol. 21, September 1889, pp. 97-132, here pp. 98-100.
  8. ↑ Wakefield Dort, Jr.: Salient aspects of the terminal zone of continental glaciation in Kansas. In: William C. Johnson (ed.): Quaternary Environments of Kansas. 33rd Field Conference, Midwest Friends of the Pleistocene, August 1986, pp. 55–66 ( digitized ).
  9. ↑ Construction: Atchison Topeka and Santa Fe. In: Railway Age. Vol. 36, September 18, 1903, p. 378.
  10. ↑ Keith L. Bryant Jr., Fred W. Frailey: History of the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Railway. university of Nebraska Press, 2020, ISBN 978-1-4962-1410-2 , pp. 172-175 & 180-182.
  11. ^ a b c BNSF Railway's Southern Transcon: Rail's Super Highway. BNSF Railway, RailTalk, 23 October 2018, accessed 18 February 2021.
  12. ↑ a b c d e f g h New Bridge Across the Missouri River at Sibley, Mo. In: Railway Age Gazette. Vol. 59, No. 1, 1915, pp. 13-16.
  13. ↑ Ballasted Timer Flour for the Sibley Bridge. In: Engineering News-Record. Vol. 74, No. 25, 1915, p. 1156 f.
  14. ↑ Elmer T. Howson (ed.): Felt, Charles FW In: Who's who in Railroading and Rail Transit. Simmons-Boardman, 1922, p. 208.
  15. ↑ Elmer T. Howson (ed.): Robinson, Albert Fowler. In: Who's who in Railroading and Rail Transit. Simmons-Boardman, 1922, p. 534.
  16. ↑ Jeff Wilson, Randy Rehberg: The Historical Guide to North American Railroads. Kalmbach Media, 2014, ISBN 978-0-89024-970-3 , pp. 27-30 and 276-280.
  17. ↑ Iowa State Rail Plan 2017: Appendix A - Profile of Iowa's Railroad Network. Iowa Department of Transportation, February 2017, p. A-12 (The bridge is part of the BNSF's Marceline Subdivision between Fort Madison and Kansas City).
  18. ↑ a b Octave Chanute, John F Wallace, William H Breithaupt: The Sibley Bridge. In: Transactions of the American Society of Civil Engineers. Vol. 21, September 1889, pp. 97–132, here p. 107 (high water level of 1844 is given here as 723.013 ft above sea level; low water as 685.613 ft).
  19. ↑ Raising the Grade on a High Embankment. In: Railway Age Gazette. Vol. 60, No. 16, 1916, p. 907 f.
  20. ↑ Octave Chanute, John F Wallace, William H Breithaupt: The Sibley Bridge. In: Transactions of the American Society of Civil Engineers. Vol. 21, September 1889, pp. 97-132, here Plate XXXVIII.
  21. ↑ Octave Chanute, John F Wallace, William H Breithaupt: The Sibley Bridge. In: Transactions of the American Society of Civil Engineers. Vol. 21, September 1889, pp. 97-132, here pp. 101-103 and 107.
  22. ↑ Glenn A. Knoblock, Historic Iron and Steel Bridges in Maine, New Hampshire and Vermont. McFarland, Jefferson 2012, ISBN 978-0-7864-4843-2 , pp. 33–37.
  23. ↑ a b Missouri River Recovery Program FACT SHEET: Missouri River Sediment. US Army Corps of Engineers, Kansas City District, September 2007, accessed March 4, 2021.
  24. ↑ David L. Galat et al.: Missouri River Basin. In: Arthur Benke, Colbert Cushing (eds.): Rivers of North America. Elsevier/Academic Press, 2005, ISBN 978-0-12-088253-3 , pp. 427-441, here pp. 432-436 and 439-441.
  25. ↑ Bank Protection Above Sibley Bridge; Santa Fe Ry. In: Engineering News. Vol. 75, No. 14, 1916, pp. 638-640.
  26. ↑ Feasibility Report: Trimble Wildlife Area Replacement, Smithville Lake, Missouri. US Army Corps of Engineers, Kansas City District, September 1976, p. 85 ( limited preview in Google Book Search).
  27. ↑ Missouri River at Sibley. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, National Weather Service (1993 high tide reported here as 719.83 ft above sea level; low tide as 683.92 ft); accessed March 14, 2021.