A Winter Swollen River

There is no indication with this photograph of where or when it was taken (it was found in a Chicago-area antique store), but it appears that the river has been swollen by winter rains and is close to flooding (if it hasn't already).

Building an Overpass

There's a tremendous amount of activity and detail in this photograph from the 1920s. Construction crews are using a steam crane and a cement mixer to mix and pour concrete for an overpass. As of this writing, I have not been able to identify the location, but there is reason to suspect it might be in or near Scranton, Pennsylvania (more on that below). The photograph itself is in poor condition, and is starting to deteriorate, having suffered water damage at one point.

A team of horses stand waiting as the crew operates a cement mixer.

The only reference that I could find to Globe Stores was to a rather famous one in Scranton, PA; however the railroad station does not appear to be a Pennsylvania one.

The Dock Bridge

So, I'm kind of a sucker for big industrial age steel constructs, and when I saw this photo in a pile of dollar photos, it went into the "buy" stack. Why? Because as an engineering marvel for its time, it's cool, that's why.

I had no idea of where this was, but a bit of searching, starting with Wikipedia's page on lift bridges, quickly showed that this is the Dock Bridge over the Passaic River between Harrison and Newark, NJ, and is on both the National and New Jersey Registers of Historic Places.

The bridge was originally built by the Pennsylvania Railroad as part of a $42 million passenger transportation project, and included Newark's Penn Station at Raymond Plaza, off to the right of our view. The west span (closest to the camera in our photo) was dedicated with appropriate pomp and circumstance for that era on March 24, 1935. At the time it was built, it was the longest three-track lift bridge in the world, with a span of 230 feet.

The east span, which opened in 1937, is actually a double bridge, with two tracks on one span and a third on the other. Today, the bridge is owned and operated by Amtrak, with the west span carrying three Amtrak Northeast Corridor tracks, and the east span hosting two PATH tracks and an Amtrak/NJ Transit track. Closed, the bridge provides a 24-foot clearance over the mean high-water mark (the Passaic River at this point is influenced by the daily tides), while fully open, the clearance is 135 feet. It takes between 15 and 20 minutes for the bridge to lift, allow a barge to pass, and then lower back into place.

According to the National Register of Historic Places documentation,

Aerial photo by Jack Boucher, April 1977; part of a NPS aerial
survey of historic places (Federal Gov't work, public domain)

Dock Bridge is the only vertical lift bridge on the Northeast Corridor railroad route. The structure is unique because of the operation of six tracks on three bridges with two lift spans. Dr. J.A.L. Waddell was one of the first to patent a simplified and improved design of vertical lift bridge in the United States. Vertical lift bridges of small spans and low lifts were constructed in Europe at a fairly early date, but no vertical lifts of any size were constructed until the late 19th century. The consulting engineering firm for the construction of this structure, Waddell & Hardesty, used the patent of Dr. Waddell in the design of the bridge.

This type is economical in construction and operation and has proven efficient in heavily trafficed areas because the span can be opened in less time than is required for a swing bridge. In addition, the span can be partially raised when height requirements are low. Heavy railroad traffic between New York City and Newark and the frequent openings necessary on the Passaic River make this structure critical to the operation of the Northeast Corridor railroad system. The machinery and electrical systems which were specifically designed for this bridge have not been significantly altered since their installation. Earle Gear and Machine Company of Philadelphia was the contractor for the machinery and the electrification was done by Gibbs & Hill.

Dock Bridge is an exceptionally important Pennsylvania Railroad engineering accomplishment. This lift bridge is an unusual engineering design in terms of its massiveness and double bridge lifts which operate independently. There are no other comparable railroad bridges in New Jersey, and it is one of the few double lift bridges in the country.

For those interested in some of the more technical details, the register also includes the following:

Aerial photo by Jack Boucher, April 1977; part of an NPS
aerial survey of historic places
(Federal Gov't work, public domain)

Dock Bridge over the Passaic River in Newark, New Jersey, a through-truss liftbridge, was constructed in 1935 by Waddell & Hardesty, Consulting Engineers, after the patent of Dr. J.A.L. Waddell. It was constructed for the Pennsylvania Railroad with T.W. Pinard, Chief Engineer of the railroad.

The structure consists of two deck girder approach spans 94 feet and 64 feet long, respectively; a through Warren truss, with verticals, lift span 230 feet long and two deck girder approach spans 64 and 68 feet long, respectively. Bridge A8.50 carries three tracks and C8.50 carries one track. PATH trains are carried on a separate span. The bridges are side by side and operate independently. This bridge has two sets of lift towers supporting three lift towers. The south towers support two bridge structures. Each span has the moving machinery located at the center of the span on the top chord of the trusses.
The substructure is 24 feet above mean high water and the abutments and piers are concrete with stone facings. There are timber fenders on both sides of the channel at the rest piers.

The main drive motors are 260-horsepower DC series wound electric motors. There are electro-hydraulic trustor brakes on each motor. The motors are geared through common spur reduction gears on shafts which transmit power to the cable drums. Cables run over the cable drums to the end of the span where they pass over an idler sheave to the bridge sheave. The bridges are raised and lowered by uphaul and downhaul cables. The counterweight cables are attached to the top chord of the trusses and run over sheaves. There is a 150 horsepower gasoline engine in the machinery house of each span. This engine serves as an emergency power source. There are compressors in the operator's house basement for bridge floor and rail locks. There are AC motor DC generator sets in the operator's house at the north shore. The bridge operator occupies the fifth floor of this house. The operator's level contains the signal interlock box, track model board, reversing drum controllers, and navigation light control. There is a cable tunnel below the river for cables carrying single-phase and 3-phase 4150-volt AC. The operator's level is the top floor of the five-level house on the north shore. The other floors contain railroad electrical equipment.

This photo provides a sense of scale to the massive bridge, as Amtrak's Vermonter crosses,
approaching Newark's Penn Station.
Photo by Tony Jin, used under CC-BY-SA 3.0 license.

A panaramic view of the Passaic Riverfront and the Dock Bridge in June 2015 on Wikimedia. The large tank in the background is gone.
Photo by Tony Jin, used under CC-BY-SA 3.0 license.

A Bridge to Build a Dam

A couple of months ago, I shared a couple of photos of the unique multiple-arch engineered dam design, and mentioned that the prevailing type of dam has always been the massive gravity dam, where the shear weight of the structure is what holds the water back. Typically, such dams are made of many, many tons of rock and earth piled up.

Today's photo shows just how this used to be done, although the location is unknown. A railroad bridge is built across the middle of where the dam is to stand, and train after train of cars hauling the fill dump off to the side, where the rock and earth are spread out by teams of horses pulling rakes. As thousands of trainloads are dumped, the mound is built higher, burying the trestle.

On the Willey Brook Bridge

Want to see these photos in modern 3D with your smart phone? You can! Jump to the bottom of the article for instructions!

It is 1891, and the Maine Central line through Crawford Notch in the White Mountains of New Hampshire is only sixteen years old. When it was originally built as the Portland and Ogdensburg Railroad, the elevations the route had to climb on its passage from Portland through the Notch to Fabyans, and the harsh terrain it was to be built through, had led many to doubt it could be done in 1875. Our photo is one half of a stereoscope card which has two albumen prints mounted on it.

The Willey Brook Bridge was four hundred feet long, and the deck was a good hundred feet over the tumbling stream below, which descends to the Saco River. In the distance (the view is looking pretty much due north), the railroad curves around the flank of Mt. Willard, and Mt. Willey is back over the photographer's left shoulder. Today, this whole region is part of the very scenic Crawford Notch State Park. Of course, when our photo was taken, Highway 302 was also missing from the river valley!

The locomotive shown, Maine Central No. 101, was still practically brand new in this photo, having been built by the Portland Company only two years earlier. She remained in service (later renumbered No. 126) until becoming obsolete and sent to the scrapper in 1916. At its peak, the Maine Central operated over 100 American-type 4-4-0 locomotives, and while they'd been far outclassed in the first couple decades of the twentieth century, a few lasted until the 1930s. Maine Central itself began operations in 1862, and quickly became the longest railroad in New England. It remained an independent company until 1981, when it was absorbed into the Guilford system. In 2006, Guilford purchased the name and logo rights of the old Pan Am Airways, and is now known as Pan Am Railways. This rail line through the Notch, part of MEC's Mountain Division, was abandoned in 1983, but was picked up and is still operated by the tourist-based Conway Scenic Railroad.

The Victorian house at the north end of the bridge housed, from what I could find, Maine Central workers who maintained this section of the line. Some sources refer to it as the John O'Groats House (as in the village in Northern Scotland), others denote it as the John O. Groats House. None of the sources elaborate on when it was built nor when it was torn down.

The Willey Brook Bridge today, as seen through the lens of Casey Thompson (who graciously gave permission to use the photo here) on October 15, 2013 . Note that this is not your Grandfather's bridge! At some point in the past, it was rebuilt with heavier steel, using a different truss design. The General Motors EMD GP-38 shown here in Conway Senic colors was originally a Maine Central locomotive. The John O'Groats house is, of course, long gone.

The Willey Brook Bridge and Saco River Canyon

 from Google Maps. The site of the John O'Groats 

house is grown over.

The mountain, the brook and thus the bridge are named for the Willey family, who have resided in legend since the 1820s because of a disaster that befell that family. Sam Willey, Jr. and his wife and children ran a small inn along the road that had run through the Notch since 1803. In June of 1826, a summer storm led to a rather large landslide down the side of the mountain behind the Willey's home and inn, the mountain that would later be named after them. The landslide missed their home, but took a lot of the dirt, rocks and trees down to the Saco River. At first, the family was terrified, but then considered that it was not likely that a second slide would occur, and in the off chance that it did, Sam built a cave shelter just below the house that the family could evacuate to if need be.

Over-all, the summer of 1826 brought drought-like conditions to the White Mountains, up until late August. From the 27th to the 28th of August, an intense storm hit the mountains, dumping an unprecidented amount of rain on the area. The Saco River rose 24 feet overnight, and the dry mountains became saturated. A number of home and farms in the Notch were flooded or completely washed away. When the storm was over, friends of the family struggled to reach the site of the inn to see how the Willey family had fared. They found that another massive landslide had come down from the mountain above the house and inn, and the near-by meadows were deep with debris. The house and inn were undamaged, but abandoned, as if either the family had heard the sound of the slide and tried to flee to their shelter, or the opposite took place, they started climbing to escape the Saco flood which appeared that it might rise to where their house sat. Eventually, the bodies of Sam and his wife, two of their children and two of their hired hands were found in the debris field; three of the children's bodies were never found. The irony is that a large rock outcropping above the Willey house had caused the slide to break into two streams, which bypassed the house on each side. Had they sheltered in place, the mountain and brook would likely have had a different name.

Want to see these photos in modern 3D with your smart phone? You can! All you need is one of the popular cardboard VR viewers - more details can be found on this tutorial page - and to download the version of the card on the right to your phone.

• Another view of the bridge.
• An earlier view of the bridge (1880s) shows a different structure for the first part of the span, plus the John O'Groats house hasn't been built yet.
• Map of Crawford Notch State Park, including the bridge
• Detailed article on the Willey Family disaster