"During construction of the Pecos High Bridge, an incident occurred that involved one of the most colorful residents of Trans-Pecos Texas, Judge Roy Bean. As justice of the peace he held court in the nearby town of Langtry. Only one fatal accident took place during the construction of the bridge, and it brought Bean out to the construction site. A portion of the structure being erected had collapsed, and ten workers had fallen, seven of whom had been killed. Judge Bean rode muleback from Langtry to hold inquest into the deaths. Beside each of the seven corpses he reportedly gave the same verdict: 'This mans seems to have come to his death by timbers falling upon him.' He then turned his attention to the wounded men., pronouncing the same verdict over them even though they were still alive. An onlooker interrupted Bean. 'Those men are not dead, Judge,' he said, to which Bean reputedly replied, 'That's all right. They ain't dead yet, but they will be. And you don't think I'm going to ride that mule back up here later just to do what I'm doing now.' Despite being pronounced dead, all three recovered." ----- T. Lindsay Baker, "Building the Lone Star: An Illustrated Guide to Historic Sites," 1986.
So many of those colossal timber well as steel tressels, look like they should collapse under their own weight, never mind anything on top of them.
They built this new bridge during WWII and tore down the old one soon after. It was a VERY slow order section of track as the heavy trains of the war put it to the test. From this angle you don't even see the gorge. During the war there were anti aircraft batteries protecting the bridge. Don't know where the enemy airplanes were supposed to come from. Must have been a lonely deployment.
I dug out some old Ektachrome slides that I took in June of 2000 when I did the Los Angles turn out of Houston on Amtrak. Here is the old steam era water tower that can be seen in the photo above as taken from the train. The old right of way was just beyond it. Here you can see the old foundations for the piers that held up the first high bridge. And here is looking further up stream.
I have no information on that particular structure. But it is probably accessed by boat coming up river from the Amistad Reservoir. It may have something to do with inspection and maintenance of the bridge. Historically there was a watchman's 2 room residence and a pumphouse for the water tower located on the canyon floor. These structures were inundated by flash flood waters on at least three different occasions between 1922 and 1960. Adjacent to the abandoned water pipeline which runs up the canyon cliff face, there is a U.S.G.S. brass monument that commemorates the June 1954 flash flood on the Pecos when waters rose over 80 feet above normal flow of the river. Since 1969, the waters of Amistad Reservoir have permanently flooded this section of the Pecos River Valley. During a severe reservoir draw-down in 1988, the lake level dropped nearly 30 feet exposing the upper portions of the old pump house.
A big test for the original High Bridge happened in 1922 when 20, 2-10-2 locomotives, were being shipped from Baldwin in Eddystone, PA to Los Angeles.
Fascinating! So, the "new" bridge must have been on this side (toward us) in the photo of the original bridge footings? I assume it is also gone. Doug
The new bridge built during WWII is still there to the south of the old bridge location. Google image
The bridge had been modified in 1910 before that photo with the locomotives was taken, due to an ever increasing amount of traffic and the demands of heavier loads. The Southern Pacific substantially reinforced the original bridge design with an additional 2,268,786 pounds of steel -bringing the total amount of steel to an estimated at 5,497,063 pounds. The grades approaching the bridge from both sides were shortened a total of 665 feet by adding fill at each end. And then a few years later in 1929 additional structural changes were made that significantly increased the load capacity for trains crossing the viaduct.
From 10/06/2019, Carolina Piedmont 2007 (former SOU GP-38 2740) rests with stablemates at Laurens, SC. The CPDR operates about 35 miles of line from Laurens to Greenville, SC formerly owned by the ACL.