1887 Big Four Stock Express stock car going to the Yard while the B&B (Bridge and Building Dept.) gang watch. 1887 vintage (Cleveland). Lawrence Baggerly Collection.
Great photo, Roger, thanks! It's amazing how that pile of "matchsticks" was able to support the locomotive. There doesn't appear to be any organization to the structure.
Very nice picture!!! Actually, there is probably more support than needed. Looks like some of the supports are there to bolster construction/rebuilding work. Thanks Stourbridge Lion. Frank
Roger, any details about where in Cleveland that bridge was constructed? In the second picture, the end of a through truss bridge can be seen nearby. I'm guessing this was in "The Flats", the industrial area in the mouth of the Cuyahoga River, but there could be other possibilities. The "Flats" filled up with factories and steel mills served by something like eight railroads. There was a tangle of tracks and many draw bridges in later years. It was on the edge of this area that the Van Sweringen brothers built the Terminal Tower and the Cleveland Union Terminal.
Photo of Bridge Construction in Cleveland Gents: That is not taken in the west Cleveland 'Flats' because the gradients of rivers there were close to ground level or a few feet above same. There are many pix in the Cleveland State University's online collection that cover, among other things the building of Cleveland's Union Terminal and Terminal Tower. There is also a series of images related to the ICC valuation documents of carriers. Notable also are the Newburgh and South Shore photos, that appear to be a variant on the same. However, they have views taken in both directions at each grade crossing(rail and vehicle alike) that are a treasure house for what urbanized working class residential areas and commercial/manufacturing neighborhoods looked like. The date of the photo is incorrect. The type of large common carrier stock car shown did not then exist. The steel plate girder truss would have only been present as part of another form of bridge at that date. That is; fabricated steel plate girders were of a different appearance than the one in the image, and would only have been seen as part of a lift bridge span's short fixed portions. At the date indicated for these images, they would have used a form of through truss, because of both the state of technology, and the ease of transporting the components from the bridge fabricating company to the worksite. Massive steel plate girders were both more expensive to make as structurally sound units, and also would have been impossible to transport by rail at this point in time. I would guess this is a twentieth century image from some time in the first couple of decades of the century. Good-Luck, pjb
