Bridges (Was Article from the old Pittsburgh Sun Telegraph)

[brathke at juno.com]

I remember a time in the 1970's when no more than one trolley was allowed
on each span at the same time.

And, back in the 60's, the old deck on the automobile side of the bridge
was replaced with an aluminum roadway deck (with some type of lightweight
paving material) in an attempt to reduce the bridge's dead (structure)
load.  Eventually they had to reduce the live (vehicle) loads as well.  I
believe that the aluminum deck was removed in the 1980's or 90's.

If anyone wants to see what the Smithfield St. Bridge looked like when it
was under construction ON TOP OF the previous Roebling Bridge, let me
know and I'll send you an e-mail photo off-line.  It looked like a
classic double deck bridge.

Bob 9/23

--------------------------------------------------

On Sat, 23 Sep 2000 09:32:29 -0700 Jim Holland <PGHPCC at pacbell.net>
writes:
> Greetings!
> 
> Kenneth Josephson wrote:
> 
> > Scott Davis mentioned that there was a strictly enforced motor 
> vehicle speed
> > limit on the Smithfield Street span, something like 25 miles per 
> hour. Were
> > the streetcars restricted to that speed? Ken J.
> 
> 	John and others mentioned that there was a time limit for 
> taking the
> trolleycars across the Smithfield St. Bridge.
> 	And sometime during the late 1950s, the water was high and a 
> barge
> scraped underneath the bridge.  It was a considerable time before 
> this
> was reported to authorities and I believe auto travel on the bridge 
> was
> suspended for a while and trolleycars had to literally crawl across!
> 
> James B. Holland
> 
>         Pittsburgh  Railways  Company  (PRCo),   1930  --  1950
>     To e-mail privately, please click here: 
> mailto:pghpcc at pacbell.net
> N.M.R.A.  Life member #2190; http://www.mcs.net:80/~weyand/nmra/

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