Placer County, California Bridges: Auburn Ravine Viaduct across I-80 (1)

August 2012 (38.896 Degrees, -121.0805 Degrees) Auburn Ravine Viaduct

The Union Pacific Railroad and I-80 travel side by side and cross each other many times as they go over the Sierra Nevada Mountains.  The railway usually approaches the roadway on trestle spans and then crosses on a deep girder or truss.

At this location south of Auburn the railway crosses the expressway on a long truss span, then makes a wide circle around the city, and crosses back under the expressway at Bowman. Not only are the yellow Union Pacific locomotives a familiar site pulling freight cars across this bridge but also the Amtrak California Zephyr (passenger train) crosses on this bridge every day.

Hundreds of books and movies have been made about all the work required to build a railroad over the Sierras. Theodore Judah was able to design the railway at a 2% grade (or less) going over Donner Pass. A treat for the railroad buffs of today are trips over the Sierras on vintage trains with travel guides/conductors wearing authentic costumes.

Placer County, California Bridges: Auburn Ravine Viaduct across I-80 (1) by Mark Yashinsky is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 License.