The Fort Wayne Railroad Bridge, listed as the Pennsylvania Railroad Bridge on the National Register of Historic Places, is a double-deck

steel truss A truss bridge is a bridge whose load-bearing superstructure is composed of a truss, a structure of connected elements, usually forming triangular units. The connected elements (typically straight) may be stressed from tension, compression, o ...

railroad

bridge A bridge is a structure built to span a physical obstacle (such as a body of water, valley, road, or rail) without blocking the way underneath. It is constructed for the purpose of providing passage over the obstacle, which is usually somethi ...

spanning the

Allegheny River The Allegheny River ( ) is a long headwater stream of the Ohio River in western Pennsylvania and New York (state), New York. The Allegheny River runs from its headwaters just below the middle of Pennsylvania's northern border northwesterly into ...

Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania Pittsburgh ( ) is a city in the Commonwealth (U.S. state), Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, United States, and the county seat of Allegheny County, Pennsylvania, Allegheny County. It is the most populous city in both Allegheny County and Wester ...

. The upper deck carries the

Fort Wayne Line The Fort Wayne Line and Fort Wayne Secondary is a rail line owned and operated by the Norfolk Southern Railway (NS), Chicago, Fort Wayne and Eastern Railroad (CFE), and CSX Transportation in Pennsylvania, Ohio, and Indiana. The line runs from Pi ...

with two tracks of

Norfolk Southern The Norfolk Southern Railway is a Railroad classes, Class I freight railroad in the United States formed in 1982 with the merger of Norfolk and Western Railway and Southern Railway (U.S.), Southern Railway. With headquarters in Atlanta, the ...

and

Amtrak The National Railroad Passenger Corporation, Trade name, doing business as Amtrak () , is the national Passenger train, passenger railroad company of the United States. It operates inter-city rail service in 46 of the 48 contiguous United Stat ...

traffic. The lower deck is unused. The bridge crosses above the Allegheny and its longest span is .

History

The bridge was built between 1901 and 1904 by

American Bridge Company The American Bridge Company is a heavy/civil construction firm that specializes in building and renovating bridges and other large, complex structures. Founded in 1900, the company is headquartered in Coraopolis, Pennsylvania, a suburb of Pitts ...

on new piers immediately next to the 1868 bridge it replaced while the old bridge remained in use. The 1868 bridge was a five-span wrought-iron lattice truss built for the

Pittsburgh, Fort Wayne and Chicago Railway The Pittsburgh, Fort Wayne and Chicago Railway was a major part of the Pennsylvania Railroad system, extending the PRR west from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, via Fort Wayne, Indiana, to Chicago, Illinois. It included the current Norfolk Southern-own ...

with two simple plate girder spans as approach roads at each end. In 1918 the bridge and associated approaches were raised (as were other neighboring bridges) to increase navigable headroom. The lower level was used by local freight trains switching in the

Downtown ''Downtown'' is a term primarily used in North America by English speakers to refer to a city's sometimes commercial, cultural and often the historical, political and geographic heart. It is often synonymous with its central business distric ...

area and the Strip District. Its tracks were removed in the 1980s as part of a major track and platform realignment through

Pennsylvania Station Pennsylvania Station (often abbreviated Penn Station) is a name applied by the Pennsylvania Railroad (PRR) to several of its grand passenger terminals. Several are still in active use by Amtrak and other transportation services; others have been ...

. File:ftwaynepgh.jpg, Center span, from a parking lot File:Pittsburgh_Fort_Wayne_Railroad_Bridge.jpg, From south bank

References

External links

* {{NRHP bridges Bridges in Pittsburgh Bridges over the Allegheny River Bridges completed in 1904 Norfolk Southern Railway bridges Pennsylvania Railroad bridges Railroad bridges on the National Register of Historic Places in Pennsylvania National Register of Historic Places in Pittsburgh Steel bridges in the United States Lattice truss bridges in the United States

History

See also

References

External links