The Ohio Connecting Railroad Bridge is a steel bridge which crosses the

Ohio River The Ohio River () is a river in the United States. It is located at the boundary of the Midwestern and Southern United States, flowing in a southwesterly direction from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, to its river mouth, mouth on the Mississippi Riv ...

at Brunot's Island at the west end of

Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania Pittsburgh ( ) is a city in Allegheny County, Pennsylvania, United States, and its county seat. It is the List of municipalities in Pennsylvania#Municipalities, second-most populous city in Pennsylvania (after Philadelphia) and the List of Un ...

, United States. It consists of two major through

truss A truss is an assembly of ''members'' such as Beam (structure), beams, connected by ''nodes'', that creates a rigid structure. In engineering, a truss is a structure that "consists of two-force members only, where the members are organized so ...

spans over the main and back channels of the river, of and respectively, with deck truss approaches.

History

Original bridge

The original Ohio Connecting Bridge was built in 1890 by the Ohio Connecting Railway. It was a single-track bridge. It was built as a freight bypass so the freight trains of the

Pennsylvania Railroad The Pennsylvania Railroad ( reporting mark PRR), legal name as the Pennsylvania Railroad Company, also known as the "Pennsy," was an American Class I railroad that was established in 1846 and headquartered in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. At its ...

could bypass the congested

passenger station A train station, railroad station, or railway station is a railway facility where trains stop to load or unload passengers, freight, or both. It generally consists of at least one platform, one track, and a station building providing such ...

in downtown Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Traffic could move in either direction between the Pennsylvania Railroad main line in

Pitcairn, Pennsylvania Pitcairn is a Borough (Pennsylvania), borough in Allegheny County, Pennsylvania, United States, located east of Pittsburgh's central business district, named for Robert Pitcairn, an official of the Pennsylvania Railroad. Early in the 20th c ...

(part of the Pittsburgh Division at that location) and the

Fort Wayne Line The Fort Wayne Line and Fort Wayne Secondary is a rail line owned and operated by the Norfolk Southern Railway (NS), Chicago, Fort Wayne and Eastern Railroad (CFE), and CSX Transportation in Pennsylvania, Ohio, and Indiana. The line runs from Pi ...

at the north end of the Ohio Connecting Bridge. Trains would traverse the

Port Perry Branch The Port Perry Branch is a rail line owned and operated by the Norfolk Southern Railway in the U.S. state of Pennsylvania. The line runs from the Pittsburgh Line in North Versailles Township southwest through the Port Perry Tunnel and across the M ...

, Monongahela Division, and Panhandle Division in order to reach the Pittsburgh Division or the Fort Wayne Line. Construction of the northern approach to the bridge required the demolition of the original Pittsburgh U.S. Marine Hospital.

Current bridge

By 1915 the original bridge was not large enough to handle the increasing freight traffic, so a new bridge was built with two tracks. The new bridge was built around the old bridge while the old bridge was still in service. The new bridge also had a

siding Siding may refer to: * Siding (construction), the outer covering or cladding of a house * Siding (rail) In rail terminology, a siding is a low-speed track section distinct from a running line or through route such as a main line, branch lin ...

and car elevator in the center so coal could be delivered to the

coal-fired power plant A coal-fired power station or coal power plant is a thermal power station which burns coal to generate electricity. Worldwide there are about 2,500 coal-fired power stations, on average capable of generating a gigawatt each. They generate a ...

on the island. This 1915 bridge is still in service. The north end of the bridge has a wye so trains can be directed west or east. If a train is directed east it must pass next to Island Avenue Yard on the Isle Connector to get to the mainline. Trains at the south end of the bridge could be directed east onto the Monongahela Division or south/southwest onto the Panhandle Division, Scully Yard, or onto the Chartiers Branch. In 1968 the Pennsylvania Railroad merged with the

New York Central The New York Central Railroad was a railroad primarily operating in the Great Lakes and Mid-Atlantic regions of the United States. The railroad primarily connected greater New York and Boston in the east with Chicago and St. Louis in the Midw ...

to form

Penn Central The Penn Central Transportation Company, commonly abbreviated to Penn Central, was an American class I railroad that operated from 1968 to 1976. Penn Central combined three traditional corporate rivals, the Pennsylvania, New York Central and the ...

. Penn Central became a part of

Conrail Conrail , formally the Consolidated Rail Corporation, was the primary Class I railroad in the Northeastern United States between 1976 and 1999. The trade name Conrail is a portmanteau based on the company's legal name. It continues to do busine ...

in 1976. In 1999,

CSX CSX Transportation , known colloquially as simply CSX, is a Railroad classes, Class I freight railroad company operating in the Eastern United States and the Canadian provinces of Ontario and Quebec. Operating about 21,000 route miles () of trac ...

and

Norfolk Southern Railway The Norfolk Southern Railway is a Class I freight railroad operating in the Eastern United States. Headquartered in Atlanta, the company was formed in 1982 with the merger of the Norfolk and Western Railway and Southern Railway. The comp ...

(NS) bought Conrail, with NS getting 58% and CSX getting 42%. The Ohio Connecting Bridge was acquired by NS.

The present

NS continues to use the bridge as part of the route trains with double-stack containers use. This practice was started by Conrail in 1995. It now connects the

Mon Line The Mon Line is an 85-mile long Norfolk Southern rail line which runs along the Monongahela River for most of its route. History The predecessor of this line is the Pittsburgh, Virginia and Charleston Railway. The northern portion (Pittsburgh to ...

, and the P&OC RR with the Fort Wayne Line and Main Line. The entire Panhandle Division/Weirton Secondary was abandoned in 1996, but the interchange with the former line remains active to interchange cars with the

Pittsburgh and Ohio Central Railroad The Pittsburgh and Ohio Central Railroad is a short-line railroad operating of rail tracks, track over the Chartiers Branch (Pennsylvania Railroad), Chartiers Branch in southwest Pennsylvania. It also operated a small portion of the former Con ...

. Many coal trains coming out of the

Monongahela Valley The Monongahela River ( , ), sometimes referred to locally as the Mon (), is a U.S. Geological Survey. National Hydrography Dataset high-resolution flowline dataThe National Map accessed August 15, 2011 river on the Allegheny Plateau in north ...

also use this bridge. Sometimes mixed freight and other types of trains use the bridge. No scheduled

passenger trains A passenger train is a train used to transport people along a railroad line, as opposed to a freight train that carries goods. These trains may consist of unpowered passenger railroad cars (also known as coaches or carriages) push-pull train, ...

use the bridge.

References

External links

* {{Pittsburgh Railroad bridges in Pennsylvania Bridges over the Ohio River Bridges completed in 1915 Norfolk Southern Railway bridges Pennsylvania Railroad bridges Historic American Engineering Record in Pennsylvania Bridges in Pittsburgh Steel bridges in the United States 1915 establishments in Pennsylvania Railroad cutoffs