Those are power lines. The two towers have flashing lights atop, and are slightly taller than when the bridge is fully open. Looking out under the bridge is Puget Sound. This is the west end of a waterway between the Sound and Lake Washington. Behind the camera are Locks, which access the fresh water channel behind. Beyond the locks are some shipyards, commercial fishing ship facilities, pleasure boat marinas and Lake Union. In Lake Union, are the homes of several commercial flying companies, (they do charters and scheduled flights of passengers and cargo locally, or up to BC and Alaska), which use pontoon equipped planes. Their flying in and out is why the lights above the bridge.
Rider Bridge Failure, New York & Erie Railroad 1850 Great article from www.structuremag.org https://www.structuremag.org/?p=14533
I have a book that has a chapter on the collapse of the Ashtabula River bridge in Ohio in 1876, also known as the Ashtabula Horror. As with others in its day, missteps in engineering and construction were the cause.
Here's some info on that collapse. What is the name of the book? Ashtabula Bridge Failure https://www.structuremag.org/?p=16567 https://bridgehunter.com/oh/ashtabula/bh46889
Nice vintage railroad bridge images from Monovision magazine https://monovisions.com/vintage-the-forth-bridge-construction-1890s/ https://monovisions.com/vintage-railroad-bridges-with-timber-trestles/
Maybe it is just my perception, but I have always felt that the higher they go, (regardless of engineering), the more spindly and weak they looked.
Bussey Bridge Disaster, aka Forest Hills Bridge, 1887 https://www.structuremag.org/?p=17909 https://www.jphs.org/transportation/bussey-bridge-disaster-feature-news-account.html
Somewhere in one of my books is a two frame newspaper cartoon from the 1800s. The first frame is an ad inviting riders to board Old Colony trains to visit Summer Resorts. The second frame is subtitled "Ye Summer Resorts" and shows recent headstones at a graveyard!
Ouch. I'll bet that pissed off a few resort owners. I couldn't locate that particular cartoon online but I found this political one. Sleeping Public circa 1870: A cartoon showing people sleeping under railway lines while a farmer tries to warn them of an approaching train whose coaches are labelled, Consolidation-Train, extortion, bribery. The cartoon is 'The Grange Awakening the Sleepers'. The Grange or 'Patrons of Husbandry' was an organisation formed to help and educate the farming community. They were against railroads because of their anti-farmer practices. (
Another interesting article about railroads and peoples opinions of big business. https://sophia.smith.edu/~maldrich/introduction.html
RAILROADS BUILD THE RED RIVER VALLEY http://web.mnstate.edu/shoptaug/railroads and the rrv/railroad.htm
Interesting study of Truss bridge patents. https://www.sia-web.org/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2013/10/SIAOccElectPub1.pdf
