{"id":1665,"date":"2007-12-03T09:50:30","date_gmt":"2007-12-03T14:50:30","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=1665"},"modified":"2007-12-03T01:08:52","modified_gmt":"2007-12-03T06:08:52","slug":"bridges-of-ramsey-county-the-greasy-black-vertical-lift-rail-bridge","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=1665","title":{"rendered":"Bridges of Ramsey County – The Greasy Black Vertical-lift Rail Bridge"},"content":{"rendered":"

Tucked under the Robert Street bridge (on which more tomorrow) is the span I affectionately have always called the Greasy Black Vertical-Lift Rail Bridge.<\/p>\n

<\/a><\/p>\n

Oh, it has a real name and all – the St. Paul Union Pacific Vertical-lift Rail Bridge<\/a> – but that hardly matters, does it?<\/p>\n

Railroad bridges are as purely utilitarian as a structure can get; there’s not a scrap of wasted, ornamental or decorative metal anywhere on this bridge.<\/p>\n

Wikipedia says:<\/p>\n

It was built in 1913<\/a> and was designed by Waddell & Harrington<\/a>. In 1925, the north end of the bridge was raised about 16 feet to tie in with tracks that served the St. Paul Union Depot<\/a> yard.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Now, I’m kind of a fumblefinger as a handyman. Raising a bridge?<\/em><\/p>\n

The bridge was originally built by the Chicago Great Western<\/a> Railroad, which later became part of the Chicago and Northwestern Railroad<\/a>. The Robert Street Bridge<\/a>, built later in 1926, had to be carefully engineered around the railroad bridge.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

With results that are, frankly, kinda cool – but we’ll get to that tomorrow.<\/p>\n

In April 1997, high water on the Mississippi River reached the bottom of the span. The Union Pacific Railroad<\/a> spotted a train of hopper<\/a> cars laden with rocks on the bridge to help anchor it and keep it from being washed away.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Truth be told, the Greasy Black Vertical-lift Rail Bridge isn’t all that interesting on its own. It’s the efforts made to work around <\/em>it that are kinda cool.<\/p>\n

But we’ll get to that tomorrow.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Tucked under the Robert Street bridge (on which more tomorrow) is the span I affectionately have always called the Greasy Black Vertical-Lift Rail Bridge. Oh, it has a real name and all – the St. Paul Union Pacific Vertical-lift Rail Bridge – but that hardly matters, does it? Railroad bridges are as purely utilitarian as […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[23],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1665","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-geekery"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1665","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1665"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1665\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1665"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1665"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1665"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}