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  • Cape May Canal Bridge stuck closed ???

  • Pertaining to all railroading subjects, past and present, in New Jersey
Pertaining to all railroading subjects, past and present, in New Jersey

Moderator: David

 #76698  by JJMDiMunno
 
snavely wrote:The canal bridge has no operator. It's operated by the train crew.
On December 4, 2004 at approx. 3:00PM, the Cape May Canal bridge failed once again. I was on the scene at Tuckahoe during their santa specials up there that day when the call came in about it. I expect that the reason that they have taken the bridge out of service for the rest of the season is due to it's requiring some significant work (the exact work that is required, I do not know).

And just to clarify something, the Canal bridge does in fact have an operator at all times that trains are operating. The operator is required to close and open the bridge from within the cabin located on the south-east side of the span. Also, the home signals for the bridge are inoperative in the sense that they always display a stop indication. All trains wishing to cross the bridge require NORAC rule 241 authority, which is issued by the bridge tender.

I believe there was some confusion there about exactly which bridge we were talking about...

Take care.

Mike DiMunno
www.SJRail.com: All about South Jersey Railroads!

 #76725  by orig.canal.super
 
Mike,
Just to let you know, from Saturday till atleast Monday the bridge was stuck in the closed position. There was no operator there and even if there was, the bridge could not move. I was just inquiring if anyone else had some real information.

 #76726  by JJMDiMunno
 
orig.canal.super wrote:Mike,
Just to let you know, from Saturday till atleast Monday the bridge was stuck in the closed position. There was no operator there and even if there was, the bridge could not move. I was just inquiring if anyone else had some real information.
Sorry about that, I wasn't claiming you were wrong in any way...there isn't any operator there now since the bridge is disabled, I was mostly correcting snavely's statement concerning the bridge being controlled by the train crew. I was just saying that at all times that trains are operating past that point (not right now, due to the bridge being disabled), there must be a tender on duty.

I'm actually not so sure they ever fully fixed the problem from the 4th...they don't run on weekdays at this time, and chances are the bridge was still disabled on the 5th (even when they were running on that day, Sunday)...so it's probably been out of service the whole time, since December 4th...

Mike DiMunno

 #77410  by orig.canal.super
 
This was something that I thought the members of this forum might have known what was going on. Since I use to work on that bridge, and my new co-workers know this, they informed me. I was just interested for info. I do not want to make the CMSL look bad in anyway. Tony has done an amazing job keeping that project growing. I know that bridge is very maintance tasking, and Don, bridge guy, has also done a great job. Thanks for the info !

 #77531  by JJMDiMunno
 
orig.canal.super wrote:Tony has done an amazing job keeping that project growing. I know that bridge is very maintance tasking, and Don, bridge guy, has also done a great job. Thanks for the info !
Yes, that bridge, like all other swing (or any type of movable span, for that matter) bridges is very maintainance intensive...and being as old as that is, it's not anyone's fault that it sometimes has troubles. Just the fact that it sat dormant for 16 years and was then brought back to life through the efforts of the CMSL is amazing in itself...

Mike DiMunno

 #77539  by Tom_E_Reynolds
 
Hi all,

Does anyone have pictures of this canal bridge?

Thanks.

--Tom

 #77630  by glennk419
 
Here's the link to the CMSL page showing the Inaugural train into Cape May. There's a picture of the train on the bridge at the bottom.
http://www.cmslrr.com/inaugural.htm