Bridges (Was Article from the old Pittsburgh Sun Telegraph)

[Fred W. Schneider III]

My dad (1907-1997) once remarked that they were trying to fix the weaknesses in
the Smithfield Street Bridge when he first went there.  He graduated from
Carnegie Tech in 1930 (oddly enough, the same class as Sam Lybarger, Ed's
father).

Was the bridge steel or cast iron? Or by now a mixture?

HRBran99 at aol.com wrote:

> In a message dated 9/28/00 12:25:10 AM Eastern Daylight Time,
> kjosephson at sprintmail.com writes:
>
> << Imagine the bottleneck if a rumor started that the Smithfield
>  Street Bridge was so unsafe, PAT decided to reopen a section of closed
> trolley
>  trackage to avoid it. >>
>
> One afternoon, during the 1970s reconstruction of the Smithfield St. Bridge
> (SSB) I was operating a car inbound and noticed one of the construction
> supervisors (I always saw him giving instructions to other workers each day)
> was in a very, very excited frenzy. He was actually running back and forth
> shouting to other workmen and generally acting crazy. I entered downtown via
> Ft. Pitt and Grant on a Library trip and began picking up passengers. I made
> the city loop and returned to SSB where there was a line of PCCs extending
> down Ft Pitt to Wood Street. Nothing, however, was moving across the bridge
> toward the tunnel. After a few minutes I made the car safe and went to the
> car ahead. That operator knew nothing about what was going on. Soon another
> operator came back from the front of the line and said they had spotting a
> large crack in a steel beam on the underside of the SSB. Hence, the running
> and shouting I had witnessed earlier. After a while they decided to send one
> car at a time across the bridge. We were told to keep a steady slow speed and
> to keep moving. I had visions of my car helping to recreate the Silver Bridge
> disaster! We all made it across and trolley service was curtailed at Carson
> Street, with cars operating inbound through the tunnel to right Carson, right
> Arlington and the hill route back to SHJct. Buses were used from downtown via
> 10th Street bridge to Carson/Smithfield. I always had an errie feeling after
> that each time I crossed the SSB. However, SSB is still standing and the PCCs
> are gone!
>
> <<Now back to sorting these trolley coach images for Herb's calendar
> project.>>
> Excellent!!!
>
> HrB