Cairo Rail Bridge is the name of two bridges crossing the Ohio River near

Cairo, Illinois Cairo ( ) is the southernmost city in Illinois and the county seat of Alexander County. The city is located at the confluence of the Ohio and Mississippi rivers. Fort Defiance, a Civil War camp, was built here in 1862 by Union General Ulysse ...

in the United States. The original was an 1889

George S. Morison George Shattuck Morison (December 19, 1842 – July 1, 1903) was an American attorney best known as a designer of bridges. He was trained to be a lawyer but instead became a civil engineer and leading bridge designer in North America in the late 1 ...

through-truss and deck

truss bridge A truss bridge is a bridge whose load-bearing superstructure is composed of a truss, a structure of connected elements, usually forming triangular units. The connected elements (typically straight) may be stressed from tension, compression, or ...

, replaced by the current bridge in 1952. The second and current bridge is a through-truss bridge that reused many of the original bridge piers. As of 2018, trains like the '' City of New Orleans'' travel over the Ohio River supported by the same piers whose construction began in 1887.

Original bridge

On July 1, 1887, construction began on the first caisson for the foundations of the bridge piers. The first caisson descended into the riverbed at a rate of around per day. Two men died and several more were seriously injured sealing the first caisson at a depth of . Despite increased precautions following the deaths, a total of five men died of

decompression sickness Decompression sickness (abbreviated DCS; also called divers' disease, the bends, aerobullosis, and caisson disease) is a medical condition caused by dissolved gases emerging from solution as bubbles inside the body tissues during decompressi ...

during construction. February 19, 1889, the last pier was completed. The first train crossed the bridge from Illinois to Kentucky on October 29, 1889. Work continued until it was turned over to the railroad on March 1, 1890. Total cost of the structure exceeded $2.6 million, with nearly $1.2 million for the substructure alone. In order to comply with regulations meant to allow steam boat travel on the Ohio, the bridge was required to be above the river's high-water mark. This resulted in the structure extending nearly from the bottom of the deepest foundation to the top of the highest iron work. The bridge, substructure and

superstructure A superstructure is an upward extension of an existing structure above a baseline. This term is applied to various kinds of physical structures such as buildings, bridges, or ships. Aboard ships and large boats On water craft, the superstruct ...

weighed 194.6 million pounds (88,270 t), excluding the approaches. On October 31, 1895, a magnitude 6.6 earthquake on the New Madrid Seismic Zone with an epicenter at Charleston, Missouri, cracked a pier on the bridge. The quake is the biggest quake since the

1812 New Madrid earthquake Year 181 ( CLXXXI) was a common year starting on Sunday (link will display the full calendar) of the Julian calendar. At the time, it was known as the Year of the Consulship of Aurelius and Burrus (or, less frequently, year 934 '' Ab urbe condi ...

which at 8.3 was the biggest recorded quake in the

contiguous United States The contiguous United States (officially the conterminous United States) consists of the 48 adjoining U.S. states and the Federal District of the United States of America. The term excludes the only two non-contiguous states, Alaska and Hawai ...

. Cairo bridge's two main spans were the longest pin-connected

Whipple truss A truss bridge is a bridge whose load-bearing superstructure is composed of a truss, a structure of connected elements, usually forming triangular units. The connected elements (typically straight) may be stressed from tension (mechanics), tensi ...

spans ever built. Pier IX, the largest, alone weighed . At the time, the bridge was the largest and most expensive ever undertaken in the

United States The United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It consists of 50 U.S. state, states, a Washington, D.C., federal district, five ma ...

. At , it was the longest metallic structure in the world. Its total length was including wooden approach trestles. Its construction completed the first rail link between

Chicago (''City in a Garden''); I Will , image_map = , map_caption = Interactive Map of Chicago , coordinates = , coordinates_footnotes = , subdivision_type = List of sovereign states, Count ...

and

New Orleans New Orleans ( , ,New Orleans

Mississippi River The Mississippi River is the second-longest river and chief river of the second-largest drainage system in North America, second only to the Hudson Bay drainage system. From its traditional source of Lake Itasca in northern Minnesota, it ...

.Historic American Engineering Record (Library of Congress)
Survey number HAER NE-2. pages 221-261.

References

External links

Cairo Ohio River Bridge
at Bridges & Tunnels * * includes information about the Cairo Rail Bridge
Illinois Central Railroad Bridge
at Illinois Historic Sites Inventory
Historic Bridges of the United States (original bridge)

Historic Bridges of the United States (second bridge)
{{KentuckyHistoricalRR Canadian National Railway bridges in the United States Bridges completed in 1889 Railroad bridges in Illinois Railroad bridges in Kentucky Bridges over the Ohio River Historic American Engineering Record in Illinois Illinois Central Railroad Cairo, Illinois Bridges in Alexander County, Illinois Whipple truss bridges in the United States Iron bridges in the United States 1889 establishments in Kentucky 1889 establishments in Illinois

Original bridge

See also

References

Further reading

External links