Awesome. FM is my home town, and my mother was buried in Illinois. On the day of her funeral, we got stuck on the bridge on our way to the burial, and there were two barges passing through it at the same time - one northbound, one southbound. I was able to get incredible views of them as they passed through. Dad was beside himself that we would be late, but I felt as if Mom had set this up for us to see on such a sad day.
I drove across this bridge with my parents in August 2021. We were visiting my sister in Springfield, Illinois, and before flying home, we wanted to visit Nauvoo. So we did so, plus went across the Mississippi River into Fort Madison for lunch. That added Iowa to my list of states I've visited.
This is my hometown, It is also great for railfanning because it has an average of 127 trains every day and I heard one honk while I made this comment!
I lived in Fort Madison, Iowa for a while and got to travel the bridge many times. You forgot to mention though that The double-decker bridge, about 1 mile (1.6 km) long with a swing span of 525 feet (160 m), was the longest and largest double-deck swing-span bridge in the world.
I have cousins that live in Cedar Rapids, IA. On my way back home to Nashville, TN, after visiting them, my stops over time have been at Mount Pleasant, Burlington, Keokuk, and Ft. Madison. So I've seen the swing bridge do it's thing several times.
Ft. Madison is a rail fan’s freak show with awesome river barge traffic for a backdrop. I’ve taken a Google Maps street level virtual tour and get the sense that the community has a lot of civic pride as shown by how historic homes and structures are handsomely maintained and neighborhoods are beautifully groomed. I think I’d love living there BUT, having lived in San Antonio for more than 70 years I know I don’t have the wiring to endure the winter weather. Congrats to dirtcheapjeep - obviously he does! :-)
I have too - lived close by 5 miles away - worked in Ft Madison at one time. Been all up and down the river, so much that I took it for granted, never really figured to the bridge to be a great engineering feat or iconic or anything like that. Stopped any number of times waiting on barges, boats of all shapes/sizes. I am amazed, however, how they coordinate all the river traffic and train traffic, considering how hard it is to stop one of those trains going nearly 100. My brother worked on a barge at one time.
Not my neighborhood, but traveled by this location and had the pleasant opportunity to watch the entire sequence as you recorded. Thanks for the video. Nicely done. To me the marvel and technology that is 90 years old and still functions to this day, humbles me as to what our forefathers have built. A welcome break for the the ultra sanitized modern structures. History. Living.
My lady died on 25 2 23, at age 73 this was her fav bridge also that long loop can't remember name , she is at rest in our living room , I play vids like these for her every day , thankyou. A rail road widower in plymouth devon .
I have been on this bridge a few times. In September 2016, I had the privilege of being the only vehicle eastbound. I got out and took quite a few pictures. There was a southbound on the ex-BN waiting, as was an eastbound. Got a couple of shots of the prison also. Only until the barge was through, did another vehicle show up. Sun was setting, gorgeous views of the Mighty Mississippi River indeed. Excellent video, as usual!
Another homerun video! If there were a 10X-thumbs-up button, I'd've just tapped it! Santa Fe was, and by extension BNSF, is so lucky that that bridge was built as a double track span and also that it is high enough, just barely, to clear double stack domestic containers. That bridge was already 50 yrs-old when the very first double stacks took to the rails, and those international containers of the late 1970's and early '80's were still a couple of feet shorter than the domestic containers of today.
Indeed, imagine the headache if this were a single track and too low! Amazingly the first bridge at the sight was also double-track, if my source was correct! Talk about foresight.
good thing they built the bridge with plenty of height clearance, today's double stack trains have clearance.... also its amazing the amount of weight on the center pilings in the middle of the river....it seems the bridge weight could just push those pilings right down into the bottom.... what great engineering!!!!!!
What a beautiful bridge! I do really like your video: silent, focused on the main subject and without any unnecessary or distracting "special effects". Thank you very much for sharing. Harald
Never even heard of Ft. Madison until the Virtual Railfan cams arrived. It's on my bucket list, it sounds like a serious (if underrated) rail hot spot.
Was just there today. Definitely worth the trip. Since we were on a bit of a schedule only 30 40 minutes for some stretching of the legs and some impromptu railfanning but in that time BNSF put on quite a show with 4 trains. Sadly no barge traffic.
How many ways did I enjoy this video. Great narration, great filming, time on each scene so you can feel a little like you would if actually there. Very mellow. No somebody-else’s-taste-in-music. Great style over all.
. another key point is somehow keeping ambient sound in the vid. There is no way for me to grade that because you could put anything in there, but if it works it is OK.
No sound trickery here! I only add the narration clips in and adjust sound levels to prevent peaking and make sure the ambient sound doesn't make the narration hard to hear
That's a remarkable bridge and you did a great job of filming and narrating its operation. Drawbridges have always been a favorite of mine and this one's pretty much unique.
We crossed this bridge in October 2018 in our camper van. We were exploring the great river road, jumping from one side to the other as we went south. This bridge was on our bucket list. Did not get to see it in action, or even a train. Thanks for the video.
The Virtual Railfan channel is streaming a live cam on RUclips at this location since yesterday (June 26th 2020), and I've learned about the existence of that bridge within that live cam. I wanted to see the bridge in action, and your video is the very first result when searching on RUclips, and for some good reason, because you can't hardly showcase it any better. Excellent job!
We used to have a similar one here in MN between Newport/St. Paul Park and Inver Grove Heights. Pretty similar. Was a private toll bridge. No trains since '81, Car traffic stopped in '99 due to a bad pier. Then part of it collapsed in '08. The swing span was demolished but on the west side some of it was saved. Kind of sad because it was a hidden gem to me!
I grew up on the Illinois side of this bridge, about 35 miles SE. The toll was 10 cents when I was a kid, but slowly raised. Iowa was a “dry state” until around 1963 - so the restaurants (with bars) were on the Illinois side :-)
Excellent and informative , professional narration. Many thanks indeed! Additionally, I much appreciated the pauses between the facts you provided. I subscribed to you some time ago and I’m glad I did. We don’t have many road and rail combined bridges here in the UK but there was a famous one on the Ballachulish railway near Oban in The Scottish Highlands where road traffic was allowed to cross between trains (which weren’t very frequent) but after the railway closed in the early 1960s it became a road traffic only bridge over the treacherous tidal Falls of Lora (I think I’ve spelled it correctly). Thanks again, Rob.
I lived only about 5 miles away on the Mississippi - close enough that you could easily throw a stone from our front yard into the river. At the back of the property was the railroad. We really thought not much of it, but looking back on it the river view was pretty darn spectacular. You got used to the train noise, people coming over hearing it for the first time thought a tornado was coming thru the house, since it didn't take very long for trains to get to nearly 100.
Alex, Another top notch (or should that be notch 8😀) video. I really appreciate how thorough you research your videos before hand. Then you professionally edit and voice track it. Kudos for a job well done. In my books you're in the top 3 rail fanners on RUclips.
Another great video :-) The narration makes it double as good. Thanks for all the details. And as mentioned by other viewers what a "luck" is was build for double stack trains. BR Adam from Denmark
Of course you only really experience it by traveling across it. The first time I crossed it I was coming out of Chicago and left the bad weather in Illinois. Ft. Madison is awesome in the sunlight. Alas,when I returned,the bad weather was already well into Missouri so I got both sides of the coin.
Beautiful bridge, and amazing its still in such heavy service. Unfortunately these things cant last forever, I wonder if the freight rail roads have been planning their long term infrastructure renewal.
Great video and narrative. I’ve been over that bridge many times. I have family that lives on both sides of the bridge. It’s interesting that the toll is a one way toll and you are only required to pay going East from Iowa to Illinois. I love this bridge. I would like to try to incorporate it into my HO model layout someday.
Nice work. I filmed the Milwaukee Road swing bridge at LaCrosse WI. Pretty amazing how long these have been operating. I’m afraid they won’t be around too much longer so it’s great to see them now!
Excellent job. Where do I start? Great lingering scenes, awesome close-ups, silence where needed and good old-school narration. Sub'd! Nice also to see the barges, river industry!
That's nothing being below it opening and closing multiple times is what's really interesting you get to see all the mechanisms at work and you get to see trains pass right over you. When the river is flooding you can actually touch the bottom of the bridge from a boat and feel the train a few feet away.
A few years ago CN replaced the ex CNW 1899 lattice truss swing bridge over the Fox River on their mainline in Oshkosh, WI with a single leaf roller bascule bridge. Even though the old bridge had some issues with its foundation, it was still able to clear double stacked containers. The new bridge opens and closes far more quickly than the old span. Should a time come when North American railroads have to convert to overhead catenary electric for tractive power, good bye double stacks, tri-level auto racks and Superliners.
this is super cool. where I'm from we have a swing bridge, (Miramichi's Morrissy Bridge) and I was 4 when the bridge closed but even before then the swing portion wasn't in use. in 2008 it was deemed unsafe and it was almost taken down in 2009 but I'm glad they didn't because that is a huge deal in Miramichi
I have been watching this video closely, mesmerized as usual ! I love ancient forms of infrastructure. Traffic is fairly steady. Can someone please tell me why building a proper bridge is NOT feasible ?
A taller bridge would require miles of approach fill to get the railroad up high enough. Thus, the cheaper option is to keep the low-slung bridges like this. In terms of replacing this older specimen, these structures were built to last, and will last almost indefinitely with proper maintenance.
From what I can tell, the camera appears to be at the foot of the original bridge span, which ran just a few degrees off of direct north to south. As viewed in aerial imagery, the curvature of the original grade is easily seen on the opposite side of the river at Niota, IL.
There’s really no room to spare for those double stack containers, I’d say if they added a couple more layers of paint on those containers they might just rub the top
I know this is just railroad specific semantics, but as you're a true railfan i thought you'd get a kick out of this (if you don't already know)..... but......"double track" is a specific railroad term used to describe current of traffic in ABS TWC territory. We only refer to two parallel tracks as "double track" when we're operating on a territory controlled by track warrant authority and/or Automatic Block Signal track warrant territory. One track will be specifically for eastbounds, the other for westbound. In CTC (centralized traffic control territory), what looks like "double track" is officially referred to as "multiple track." Because control point signals and movement authority for trains is controlled by a dispatcher without the need for track warrants, movement can be in any direction on either track. If you didn't know already i thought you'd find that interesting. The territory through Ft Madison is CTC, therefore this section of track is called "multiple track." That being said, even us rail crews still say double track incorrectly much of the time because we're used to it having been double track before the conversions to CTC
It's quite high - the bridge is just so big it looks low, and this is also a wide spot in the river. There's a good 15' of clearance in this video, and the river level is up a good 5' or so from typical late-spring levels.
Excellent video. Fantastic footage. I am curious, does river traffic pay a toll? It does not appear they do, I am just wondering. Thank you for sharing.
Awesome. FM is my home town, and my mother was buried in Illinois. On the day of her funeral, we got stuck on the bridge on our way to the burial, and there were two barges passing through it at the same time - one northbound, one southbound. I was able to get incredible views of them as they passed through. Dad was beside himself that we would be late, but I felt as if Mom had set this up for us to see on such a sad day.
I drove across this bridge with my parents in August 2021. We were visiting my sister in Springfield, Illinois, and before flying home, we wanted to visit Nauvoo. So we did so, plus went across the Mississippi River into Fort Madison for lunch. That added Iowa to my list of states I've visited.
I've seen this bridge on Railfans live stream, it is so good to be able to see it up close and working. Great Video Quality too.
This is my hometown, It is also great for railfanning because it has an average of 127 trains every day and I heard one honk while I made this comment!
I lived in Fort Madison, Iowa for a while and got to travel the bridge many times. You forgot to mention though that The double-decker bridge, about 1 mile (1.6 km) long with a swing span of 525 feet (160 m), was the longest and largest double-deck swing-span bridge in the world.
Compliments the Virtual Railfan camera perfectly, thankyou very interesting.
Impressionnant et superbe. Rien de plus...
Great video! I check the VRF Fort Madison site numerous times a day. Don’t see anything like this here in New Jersey.
I have cousins that live in Cedar Rapids, IA. On my way back home to Nashville, TN, after visiting them, my stops over time have been at Mount Pleasant, Burlington, Keokuk, and Ft. Madison. So I've seen the swing bridge do it's thing several times.
Thanks that was a great show. Americana at its best.
Absolutely; cracking video, thanks for posting it. ❤👍
Thank you for showing us a piece of history that is still in use. Good day and make more videos too.
I'm in Australia
I found your video very interesting and you are very informative
great stuff
I've been over that bridge countless times, that's my home town, I really appreciate Fort Madison getting some rail fan attention.
Ft. Madison is a rail fan’s freak show with awesome river barge traffic for a backdrop. I’ve taken a Google Maps street level virtual tour and get the sense that the community has a lot of civic pride as shown by how historic homes and structures are handsomely maintained and neighborhoods are beautifully groomed. I think I’d love living there BUT, having lived in San Antonio for more than 70 years I know I don’t have the wiring to endure the winter weather. Congrats to dirtcheapjeep - obviously he does! :-)
Virtual Railfan has a camera here.
I have too - lived close by 5 miles away - worked in Ft Madison at one time. Been all up and down the river, so much that I took it for granted, never really figured to the bridge to be a great engineering feat or iconic or anything like that. Stopped any number of times waiting on barges, boats of all shapes/sizes. I am amazed, however, how they coordinate all the river traffic and train traffic, considering how hard it is to stop one of those trains going nearly 100. My brother worked on a barge at one time.
Not my neighborhood, but traveled by this location and had the pleasant opportunity to watch the entire sequence as you recorded. Thanks for the video. Nicely done. To me the marvel and technology that is 90 years old and still functions to this day, humbles me as to what our forefathers have built. A welcome break for the the ultra sanitized modern structures. History. Living.
My lady died on 25 2 23, at age 73 this was her fav bridge also that long loop can't remember name , she is at rest in our living room , I play vids like these for her every day , thankyou. A rail road widower in plymouth devon .
thanks much for the video. would have seen this awesome.
I have been on this bridge a few times. In September 2016, I had the privilege of being the only vehicle eastbound. I got out and took quite a few pictures. There was a southbound on the ex-BN waiting, as was an eastbound. Got a couple of shots of the prison also. Only until the barge was through, did another vehicle show up. Sun was setting, gorgeous views of the Mighty Mississippi River indeed. Excellent video, as usual!
amazing. great video. love as always. thx so much.
I have been across this bridge as well, but on Amtrak's Southwest Chief
I've been on that bridge so many times I took it for granted and it was quite annoying, actually, when you're in a rush and had to wait on it.
An excellent video covering all aspects of the bridge operation! The double stacked containers sure don't appear to have much clearance.
I'm wondering how Edwardian thinking there must have brought about such a generous loading guage.
Another homerun video! If there were a 10X-thumbs-up button, I'd've just tapped it! Santa Fe was, and by extension BNSF, is so lucky that that bridge was built as a double track span and also that it is high enough, just barely, to clear double stack domestic containers. That bridge was already 50 yrs-old when the very first double stacks took to the rails, and those international containers of the late 1970's and early '80's were still a couple of feet shorter than the domestic containers of today.
Indeed, imagine the headache if this were a single track and too low! Amazingly the first bridge at the sight was also double-track, if my source was correct! Talk about foresight.
Was just wondering if it was a double so thank you man! AMAZING bridge!
@@ThornappleRiverRailSeries - Double tracking was very common in the 1800s due to poor communications and signaling as compared with the 20th century.
good thing they built the bridge with plenty of height clearance, today's double stack trains have clearance.... also its amazing the amount of weight on the center pilings in the middle of the river....it seems the bridge weight could just push those pilings right down into the bottom.... what great engineering!!!!!!
Thank you for this video. We have crossed this bridge twice on Amtrak in May 2019.
What a beautiful bridge!
I do really like your video: silent, focused on the main subject and without any unnecessary or distracting "special effects".
Thank you very much for sharing. Harald
Never even heard of Ft. Madison until the Virtual Railfan cams arrived. It's on my bucket list, it sounds like a serious (if underrated) rail hot spot.
Was just there today. Definitely worth the trip. Since we were on a bit of a schedule only 30 40 minutes for some stretching of the legs and some impromptu railfanning but in that time BNSF put on quite a show with 4 trains.
Sadly no barge traffic.
I've got to admit,that was pretty interesting.
Never seen a normally closed swing bridge or one that carried both both vehicular and rail traffic. Great vid. & love your narration.
Very impressive Bridge and Boat! Thanks a lot.
How many ways did I enjoy this video. Great narration, great filming, time on each scene so you can feel a little like you would if actually there. Very mellow. No somebody-else’s-taste-in-music. Great style over all.
. another key point is somehow keeping ambient sound in the vid. There is no way for me to grade that because you could put anything in there, but if it works it is OK.
No sound trickery here! I only add the narration clips in and adjust sound levels to prevent peaking and make sure the ambient sound doesn't make the narration hard to hear
That's a remarkable bridge and you did a great job of filming and narrating its operation. Drawbridges have always been a favorite of mine and this one's pretty much unique.
Isso é um verdadeiro espetáculo.parabens pelo o vídeo
We crossed this bridge in October 2018 in our camper van. We were exploring the great river road, jumping from one side to the other as we went south. This bridge was on our bucket list. Did not get to see it in action, or even a train. Thanks for the video.
An Overall Excellent Presentation. Thanks for Solid Content and an always Interesting Video. 👍
Glad you enjoyed it!
@@ThornappleRiverRailSeries My only wish is that you might make another vid using a drone. Outstanding presentation.
Excellent video! What an impressive structure. If I'm never able to travel to see this in person I'm glad you were able to share it with us.
Very impressive! Really dig all the history & facts you speak of as well, makes the video all the better for it...great video!
We need to see more videos like this one. Great video
lived in ft Madison all my life. it's an awesome bridge
The Virtual Railfan channel is streaming a live cam on RUclips at this location since yesterday (June 26th 2020), and I've learned about the existence of that bridge within that live cam. I wanted to see the bridge in action, and your video is the very first result when searching on RUclips, and for some good reason, because you can't hardly showcase it any better. Excellent job!
Wow, cool to hear! I’ll have to check that out. Glad to be a good primer on the bridge and area for you and others!
Excellent! I've been watching this on the railcam thingumijig, and it's nice to get a very good closeup view of it
Gorgeous video in every way. Most enjoyable, thanks a lot.
I'm glad the announcer didn't talk constantly or make dumb jokes like so many do and let the pictures tell most of the story.
Great video, editing and narration work. Excellent video Alex. Always enjoyable.
Now ... THIS is how to present a swing bridge video.
The bridge is really cool but that is some skill driving the tug thru the opening of the span.
Pushing the barges, I don't know how they can steer (aim!) so well.
I love this video! After seeing one of your past videos on this bridge I put it on my rail fanning bucket list!
What an engineering marvel! Great video!
We used to have a similar one here in MN between Newport/St. Paul Park and Inver Grove Heights. Pretty similar. Was a private toll bridge. No trains since '81, Car traffic stopped in '99 due to a bad pier. Then part of it collapsed in '08. The swing span was demolished but on the west side some of it was saved. Kind of sad because it was a hidden gem to me!
Now THAT'S A bridge! Great video! Looks closely at 2:20 and you can see a PTC antenna on the top of the bridge.
PTC?
@@bullmiller175 Positive Train Control
I grew up on the Illinois side of this bridge, about 35 miles SE.
The toll was 10 cents when I was a kid, but slowly raised.
Iowa was a “dry state” until around 1963 - so the restaurants (with bars) were on the Illinois side :-)
Thanks for the tour of that amazing structure.
Excellent and informative , professional narration. Many thanks indeed! Additionally, I much appreciated the pauses between the facts you provided. I subscribed to you some time ago and I’m glad I did. We don’t have many road and rail combined bridges here in the UK but there was a famous one on the Ballachulish railway near Oban in The Scottish Highlands where road traffic was allowed to cross between trains (which weren’t very frequent) but after the railway closed in the early 1960s it became a road traffic only bridge over the treacherous tidal Falls of Lora (I think I’ve spelled it correctly). Thanks again, Rob.
Fort Madison is such a good hotspot. I watch the railcam here once in a while! How many trains run per day there?
I lived only about 5 miles away on the Mississippi - close enough that you could easily throw a stone from our front yard into the river. At the back of the property was the railroad. We really thought not much of it, but looking back on it the river view was pretty darn spectacular. You got used to the train noise, people coming over hearing it for the first time thought a tornado was coming thru the house, since it didn't take very long for trains to get to nearly 100.
Great videography and clear narration. There's also a swing bridge in Mystic, CT. At least back in the late 90s. Cheers
Muy interesante y resuelve tres temas de transporte. Muy bien ilustrado. Muchas gracias
Alex, Another top notch (or should that be notch 8😀) video. I really appreciate how thorough you research your videos before hand. Then you professionally edit and voice track it. Kudos for a job well done. In my books you're in the top 3 rail fanners on RUclips.
our America at work! TY for sharing
A very cool bridge....
Another great video :-) The narration makes it double as good. Thanks for all the details. And as mentioned by other viewers what a "luck" is was build for double stack trains. BR Adam from Denmark
Great video. Loved the style of it, and the picture quality is absolutely top drawer. Excellent stuff.
Excellent commentary.
Of course you only really experience it by traveling across it. The first time I crossed it I was coming out of Chicago and left the bad weather in Illinois. Ft. Madison is awesome in the sunlight. Alas,when I returned,the bad weather was already well into Missouri so I got both sides of the coin.
Beautiful bridge, and amazing its still in such heavy service. Unfortunately these things cant last forever, I wonder if the freight rail roads have been planning their long term infrastructure renewal.
I've never seen a train towing actually tractor trailers before. That's pretty cool, along with the bridge.
Great video and narrative. I’ve been over that bridge many times. I have family that lives on both sides of the bridge. It’s interesting that the toll is a one way toll and you are only required to pay going East from Iowa to Illinois. I love this bridge. I would like to try to incorporate it into my HO model layout someday.
Nice work. I filmed the Milwaukee Road swing bridge at LaCrosse WI. Pretty amazing how long these have been operating. I’m afraid they won’t be around too much longer so it’s great to see them now!
Love the footage of the towboat & barges
2:00 When I was little, I used to get a toy wooden turntable bridge to add on my wooden train table
Excellent job. Where do I start? Great lingering scenes, awesome close-ups, silence where needed and good old-school narration. Sub'd! Nice also to see the barges, river industry!
This Is Great Watching The Fort Madison Iowa Swingbridge 😊😊😊 🚂🚂🚂
The bridge opening and closing is really cool! I wonder if river trafic sometimes stacks up to all go through at one opening.
Hi Dan!!
Hopefully that won't happen. Barge traffic has first priority!
Super bridge..
Awesome bridge and excellent video!
Nice work.
Полёт инженерных мыслей не знает границ.👍
That's nothing being below it opening and closing multiple times is what's really interesting you get to see all the mechanisms at work and you get to see trains pass right over you. When the river is flooding you can actually touch the bottom of the bridge from a boat and feel the train a few feet away.
That was cool to watch.
Very cool video,I have to get back out that way hopefully soon.Nicely done video.
Amazing Bridge,and that Tug is hauling ass against the current,Wow.
Tow not Tug.
You should also check out the Arsenal Island double decker train & car bridge in Davenport, IA. It's a sight to see!
i wonder what it feels like in that control house when the train hits that swing area? anybody been up in there for that?
An impressive barge consist and bridge..some engineering.Thanks
A few years ago CN replaced the ex CNW 1899 lattice truss swing bridge over the Fox River on their mainline in Oshkosh, WI with a single leaf roller bascule bridge. Even though the old bridge had some issues with its foundation, it was still able to clear double stacked containers.
The new bridge opens and closes far more quickly than the old span.
Should a time come when North American railroads have to convert to overhead catenary electric for tractive power, good bye double stacks, tri-level auto racks and Superliners.
this is super cool. where I'm from we have a swing bridge, (Miramichi's Morrissy Bridge) and I was 4 when the bridge closed but even before then the swing portion wasn't in use. in 2008 it was deemed unsafe and it was almost taken down in 2009 but I'm glad they didn't because that is a huge deal in Miramichi
That's Awesome
Wow ! THAT'S a big bridge. I'm surprised that it can handle double stacks. Thanks for sharing !
Great video as always. Nice work.
Excellent narration👍
Enjoyed the video! Great narration indeed!
I have been watching this video closely, mesmerized as usual ! I love ancient forms of infrastructure. Traffic is fairly steady.
Can someone please tell me why building a proper bridge is NOT feasible ?
A taller bridge would require miles of approach fill to get the railroad up high enough. Thus, the cheaper option is to keep the low-slung bridges like this. In terms of replacing this older specimen, these structures were built to last, and will last almost indefinitely with proper maintenance.
@@ThornappleRiverRailSeries Much Abliged. I have NEVER seen a railfan channel better than yours!
From what I can tell, the camera appears to be at the foot of the original bridge span, which ran just a few degrees off of direct north to south. As viewed in aerial imagery, the curvature of the original grade is easily seen on the opposite side of the river at Niota, IL.
Pretty much!
amazing bridge
There’s really no room to spare for those double stack containers, I’d say if they added a couple more layers of paint on those containers they might just rub the top
I was just thinking the same thing!
Tunnels are like that too. I remember seeing a video of a freight hopper clogging than nearly getting smashed off.
Outstanding video👍
wow he's really fighting that current
1:55 A bridge turntable?! I don't see that every day!
In the Netherlands there are several turntable bridges but smaller as this one.
Greetings from the Čech Republic 🇨🇿
Im used to them. Theres 3 in toledo, used to be more
Thats one big ass swing bridge!
great video thank you for posting
This bridge is very cool and awesome
I know this is just railroad specific semantics, but as you're a true railfan i thought you'd get a kick out of this (if you don't already know)..... but......"double track" is a specific railroad term used to describe current of traffic in ABS TWC territory. We only refer to two parallel tracks as "double track" when we're operating on a territory controlled by track warrant authority and/or Automatic Block Signal track warrant territory. One track will be specifically for eastbounds, the other for westbound. In CTC (centralized traffic control territory), what looks like "double track" is officially referred to as "multiple track." Because control point signals and movement authority for trains is controlled by a dispatcher without the need for track warrants, movement can be in any direction on either track. If you didn't know already i thought you'd find that interesting. The territory through Ft Madison is CTC, therefore this section of track is called "multiple track." That being said, even us rail crews still say double track incorrectly much of the time because we're used to it having been double track before the conversions to CTC
It’s amazing how low the bridge is to the water.
It's quite high - the bridge is just so big it looks low, and this is also a wide spot in the river. There's a good 15' of clearance in this video, and the river level is up a good 5' or so from typical late-spring levels.
Excellent video. Fantastic footage. I am curious, does river traffic pay a toll? It does not appear they do, I am just wondering. Thank you for sharing.
Fantastic video!!!