Friday, April 17, 2015

Shasta County, California Bridges: Union Pacific Railroad Lakehead Bridge across the Sacramento River

April 2015 (40.92625 Degrees-122.40447 Degrees) Lakehead Railroad Bridge
Continuing upstream along the Sacramento River we arrived at the Union Pacific Lakehead Bridge. As can be seen in the photo most of these bridges are connected to tunnels because the railroad was trying to keep the grade low while going through the mountains. I've noticed these odd grates on these railroad hanging from the upstream side of the truss ends. Are they suppose to deflect debris away from the superstructure during flood stage? We must be far enough away from the Shasta Dam that a bridge can cross the Sacramento River with a single 200 ft span, instead of three spans that are at Doney Creek, and the six spans that are required at Salt Creek.
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Shasta County, California Bridges: Union Pacific Railroad Lakehead Bridge across the Sacramento River by Mark Yashinsky is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.

1 comment:

  1. Those "odd grates" look like telegraph line brackets to me - substituting for the crossbars on telegraph poles away from the river crossing. Functionally similar but structurally varying brackets are visible in other of your railway bridge photos.

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