Ages ago I took the Empire Builder from Chicago to Portland via Spokane. I certainly enjoyed the ride and the small towns along the flat country. One part especially intrigued me as we entered Havre station and I wonder if anyone here can help me out.
There's a large road bridge which crosses the line just before the station. The train was going very slowly as we passed under it. I was looking south as we travelled east.
My recollection was that the bridge's road-bed was quite a traditional concrete, but the bridge's vertical supports looked to be logs. It didn't make much sense to me when I thought I'd spotted that, and I wasn't able to take a pic while close enough. I reckon that this must be the 7th Avenue N bridge after checking out a map - it looks like it has the span of the bridge I saw, and would have the bow and the gradual height increase over the beginnings of the railyards we were in.
But with log supports? If anyone can let me know I was hallucinating, I'd be grateful. My eyes were giving me information which made little engineering sense, but the supports didn't look like the smooth-sided concrete columns I expected. The supports said logs to me.
Maybe the head engineer's apprentice misunderstood when he asked for some help with the calculations during the design phase and was told to get out his log charts?
There's a large road bridge which crosses the line just before the station. The train was going very slowly as we passed under it. I was looking south as we travelled east.
My recollection was that the bridge's road-bed was quite a traditional concrete, but the bridge's vertical supports looked to be logs. It didn't make much sense to me when I thought I'd spotted that, and I wasn't able to take a pic while close enough. I reckon that this must be the 7th Avenue N bridge after checking out a map - it looks like it has the span of the bridge I saw, and would have the bow and the gradual height increase over the beginnings of the railyards we were in.
But with log supports? If anyone can let me know I was hallucinating, I'd be grateful. My eyes were giving me information which made little engineering sense, but the supports didn't look like the smooth-sided concrete columns I expected. The supports said logs to me.
Maybe the head engineer's apprentice misunderstood when he asked for some help with the calculations during the design phase and was told to get out his log charts?
