The Pacific Commercial Advertiser

NIAGARA'S NEW RAILROAD BRIDGE.

Steel Structure Being Built to Take the Place of the Suspension Bridge.

The historic suspension railway bridge over the Niagara gorge will be entirely removed by July 1 and a new steel structure, remarkable in many of its features, will be in place. The new bridge is being built around the old and the change from one to the other will be made without interference to traffic. This new bridge will consist of one mighty steel arch span, 550 feet between springing points—the largest arch in all the world—flanked on either side by a trussed span, 115 feet in length, connecting the same with the cliff on each side of the river. In addition to this there will be approaches 290 feet in length. This mighty structure, to cost half a million dollars, and to weigh 7,200,000 pounds, is to take the place of the present suspension bridge, which was long considered one of the best in the world. It was built in 1855 by John A. Roebling for the Niagara Falls International Bridge Company of New York, and the Niagara Falls Suspension Bridge Company of Canada.

In 1880 the original suspended superstructure was found inadequate, and was substituted by a new steel stiffening truss 820 feet long. Six years later the stone towers on the top of the cliffs supporting the cables were found to be crumbling, and were replaced by new ones of steel, without interruption of traffic. Both of these changes were made under the direction of L. L. Buck, chief engineer in charge of the new structure for the Pennsylvania Steel Company, which is doing the work for the two corporations owning the bridge franchise. Now comes another and a greater change. The old bridge, with its single track, is inadequate for the enlarged traffic and the increase in weight of locomotive engines, and will be replaced by a new bridge with two railway tracks on its upper deck, and with wagon ways, sidewalks and trolley tracks beneath. The lower tracks will be used for an electric line from the United States to Canada around the Whirlpool gorge.

A strange feature in changing from one bridge to the other is that it will be done without interference with the heavy traffic, though the new bridge is being built on the exact site of the old one which it surrounds, and with which it is interlaced. The new structure gets not one ounce of support from the old, as it extends from the cliffs on either side out into the air in an apparently mysterious manner, and to the eye of the tyro defies gravity. Its huge pieces of steel, which in some instances exceed thirty tons in weight, are being extended with apparently only the atmosphere under them. When these two sides of the arch meet in the center of the span and are joined, the old bridge will be blocked up on the new one, the new bridge carrying it in addition to its own weight and the regular traffic. The latter will then be disconnected piece by piece, and the new floor system placed in position as the work progresses. The last work will be to remove the four cables of the suspension bridge, each weighing 170 tons and having a length of 1,600 feet. Then the towers will come down, and a landmark long familiar to tourists to Niagara Falls will have disappeared.—New York Herald.