[TheForge] Old bridges (Was: standard materials on hand)

[Mike Spencer]

> There are several very old iron bridges in my area that are slated
> to come down and I keep asking if I can salvage some of the metal...

There was a 100 year old, one-lane king truss bridge near me.  A
few years ago, a boom truck with a poorly secured boom went
across.  Boom came loose, cleaned out a critical element.  Truck and
bridge went into the (rather shallow, tidal) river.  Of course, I
tried to get some pieces after they'd dragged the wreckage out of the
drink.  Ho hum: the whole works had to sit in the highway department's
fenced compound for months while the provincial engineers, the/some
insurance company engineers, lawyers' engineers and who knows who else
had a chance to scrutinize it.  I finally gave up.

After a year of using a really dangerous, unpaved back-road detour
with no guard rails above the drop-off to the river, we got a crappy,
ugly insta-bridge and it's still one lane.


- Mike

-- 
Michael Spencer                  Nova Scotia, Canada       .~. 
                                                           /V\ 
mspencer at tallships.ca                                     /( )\
http://home.tallships.ca/mspencer/                        ^^-^^