Tulip Viaduct

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Coordinates: 39 ° 4 ′ 31 ″  N , 86 ° 51 ′ 15 ″  W.

Tulip Viaduct
Tulip Viaduct
use Railway bridge
Crossing of Richland Creek
place Between Bloomfield and Solsberry , Indiana
Entertained by Indiana Rail Road
Building number X76-6
construction Trestle Bridge
overall length 700 m
Longest span 23 m
Construction height 41 m
opening 1906
location
Tulip Viaduct (USA)
Tulip Viaduct

The Tulip Viaduct (also Tulip Trestle or Richland Creek Viaduct ) is a single-track railway bridge in Greene County of the state of Indiana in the USA. The Trestle Bridge crosses the Richland Creek valley about three kilometers east of the eponymous small community of Tulip. The steel bridge was built until 1906 as part of the Indianapolis Southern Railroad , whose main shareholder was the Illinois Central Railroad (IC). The section between Indianapolis in Indiana and Newton in Illinois was acquired in 1986 by Indiana Rail Road (INRD), which now operates the bridge as part of its regional network of over 360 kilometers.

history
Construction of the viaduct in 1906; Location Orange mark2.svgin Indiana

The Tulip Viaduct is now part of the main line between Indianapolis and Newton of the regional railway company Indiana Rail Road (INRD), whose beginnings go back to the end of the 19th century. During the strong expansion of the railroad network in the USA from the 1880s onwards, several smaller railroad companies emerged in southern Indiana and Illinois - mostly through local business people - two of which were to become the forerunners of today's INRD. In Illinois, the Springfield, Effingham & Southeastern Railroad was built from Effingham , which ran eastwards across Newton to the Illinois border in 1880 and reached Switz City in Indiana the following year . In 1883, this 142-kilometer route was incorporated into the Indiana & Illinois Southern Railway , which in turn was taken over by the Illinois Central Railroad (IC) in 1890 . From Indianapolis, the construction of the Indianapolis Southern Railroad began in 1903 , which was supposed to run south via Bloomington and Bloomfield to Sullivan , but ran into financial difficulties in 1904 and was also taken over by the IC. The IC changed the destination to Switz City and connected this 144-kilometer section of the route with the Indiana & Illinois Southern Railway , which enabled them to expand their north-south network between Chicago and New Orleans east to Indianapolis by the end of 1906 .

Before Bloomfield, construction had to cross the Richland Creek valley about three kilometers east of the small community of Tulip. In order to avoid gradients of more than 5 ‰, one of the largest trestle bridges in the USA was built in 1906 , which at that time was only exceeded by the Boone Viaduct (818 meters) from 1901 with a length of about 700 meters . It leads the track level over the valley at a height of almost 50 meters and is today one of the longest still existing bridges of this type in the world. The IC used the connection via the Tulip Viaduct until the 1980s, but with the merger with Gulf, Mobile and Ohio Railroad (GM&O) in 1972, it had partly parallel routes and sold several branches to optimize the network, including the connection in 1986 from Newton to Indianapolis to the newly formed INRD. This subsequently developed into one of the most successful regional Class 2 railway companies , was named Regional Railroad of the Year in 2012 and 2018 by the Railway Age magazine, among others , and continues to use the more than hundred-year-old steel bridge within its network for rail freight transport .

description

The Trestle Bridge consists of 18  steel lattice masts , each standing on four concrete pedestals without reinforcement , which in turn were erected directly on the rock that dominates here. On the outside there are still some narrow steel pillars with only two plinths each and a concrete pillar on the east side. The superstructure consists of solid wall girders 12 meters long on the masts and 23 meters between them and a few shorter ones towards the abutments . The total length of the Trestle Bridge was given in 1906 as 675 meters, but later increased to almost 700 meters, presumably due to changes to the former abutment on the east side, which could correspond to the free-standing concrete pillar. The height of the track level above the concrete base is given as 41 meters and the total height at the lowest point of the valley as around 48 meters. The total weight of the steel structure is around 2700 tons.

  • Track level

  • Three of the steel lattice masts up to 50 meters high

  • View through the masts below the platform level

literature

Web links

Commons : Tulip Viaduct  - collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Christopher Rund, Fred W. Frailey, Eric Powell: The Indiana Rail Road Company: America's New Regional Railroad. Indiana University Press, 2012, ISBN 978-0-253-35695-6 , pp. 19-40.
  2. ^ A b The Indianapolis Southern Railroad. In: Railroad Gazette. Vol. 42, No. 11, 1907, pp. 332-336.
  3. ^ Reed Parker: Indiana Railroad Wins Prestigious Award. Inside Indiana Business, March 8, 2018, accessed May 13, 2020.
  4. ↑ Tulip Viaduct. american-rails.com, accessed May 13, 2020.
  5. ^ Christopher Rund, Fred W. Frailey, Eric Powell: The Indiana Rail Road Company: America's New Regional Railroad. Indiana University Press, 2012, ISBN 978-0-253-35695-6 , p. 101.
  6. ^ Trestle on the Indianapolis Southern Railroad. In: Engineering World. Vol. 4, No. 25, 1906, pp. 773 f.