TRAIN TUESDAY: The Conemaugh Viaduct It was here, at the end of the oxbow, that the water smashed into its first major obstacle, a tremendous stone viaduct which had been built more than fifty years earlier to take the old Portage Railroad across the Little Conemaugh and which was still used for the main line of the Pennsylvania. The viaduct was one of the landmarks of the country. It stood seventy-five feet high and bridged the river gap with one single eighty-foot arch....it was, as one engineer said, a substantial and imposing piece of masonry... (David McCullough, The Johnstown Flood, pp. 107-108) The bridge held momentarily....Now, for a brief instant (no one knows exactly how long it lasted), Lake Conemaugh formed again some five and a half miles downstream from its original resting place. It gathered itself together, held now by another dam, which however temporary was nonetheless as high as the first one; and when this second dam let go, it did so even more suddenly and with greater violence than the first one. The bridge collapsed all at once, and the water exploded into the valley with its maximum power now concentrated again by the momentary delay. (David McCullough, The Johnstown Flood, pp. 108-109) The first two photos are of the original viaduct and the third photo is of the rebuilt viaduct. ~NMK
Posted on: Tue, 27 Jan 2015 14:00:01 +0000
Recently Viewed Topics
© 2015