LV Genesee River Bridge

I just got a good video "Lehigh Valley Memories"" Vol. 3 Sayre to Buffalo. An old 8 mm movie from the late 50's shows a train crossing the Genesee River or so says the narrator, the bridge shown is a simple deck affair but as we know the bridge today, part of a bike trail, has a superstructure, a rather strange looking one at that, not a normal truss bridge. Can anyone explain?

The bridge carried the double-track mainline over the Genesee River - and given the weight of locomotives at the time - it had to support that for the entire length of the main structure over the river itself. Likely over-engineered - but they didn't have to rebuild it 20 years later to carry heavier loads - or due to failure. That thing will probably be standing 100 years from now.

The trail runs under the actual tracks which ran on the top side of the structure. There were considerable approaches on either side of the actual structure over the river itself. There's an engineering drawing of it on display at the RGVRRM in Rush, NY. I have a picture of that somewhere...

The LV main was elevated across the river "valley"(for lack of a better term to describe the flats along the river) for some distance using deck girder spans on towers on both sides of the actual river bridge. In addition to the river, the bridge crossed both the Erie (LA&L) and PRR (abandoned/trail) branches into Rochester.

After the line was abandoned, the approach spans were removed; they were fairly easy to cut up for the steel, as it could just be dropped to the ground in chunks small enough to truck away. But the portion that remains today would have been a great deal of work to remove, even with the high prices scrap has brought off and on in the last few years it may still not be cost effective to scrap it.

Thanks to both of you for the responses. Although I lived in Rochester when the Valley was active I never visited the bridge until after abandonment, assume a lower deck was built for the railtrail and approaches were filled in and graded.
Here's my LV story: In 1958 I was 13, our family was out for a drive and came to a crossing near Mendon, a westbound freight was going by so my Dad stopped of course, there were flashing lights and a warning bell. After the caboose passed Dad started across and my Mother suddenly let out a scream, an eastbound passenger train was right there and moving at speed on the double track. We nearly were hit and our new Desoto would have been a PA1 hood ornament. It was early afternoon so probably the Black Diamond was the train.

Correction:

The Lehigh Valley Railroad Genesee River bridge did not pass over the Erie Rochester branch. There was a section of fill between the east end of the Genesee River bridge and the west end of the bridge over the Erie (E-L). The latter bridge also passed over an access road that paralleled the E-L for a short way and that lead to a farm that was at one time a part of The School of Industry.

TB Diamond wrote:The latter bridge also passed over an access road that paralleled the E-L for a short way and that lead to a farm that was at one time a part of The School of Industry.

Said road provided access to a nice photo op across a cornfield south of the long trestle. The only problem was that was pretty much your only shot - by the time one retraced their way up that road to the main highway, the train had a head start which was hard, if not impossible, to overcome unless they had to stop for a meet somewhere.

On a visit home in March of '99 I hiked down the ROW to view the bridge, just found the old photos and one shows the stone supports for the approaches. Stumped as to why the Valley built such a high bridge, certainly did not need it just to cross the PRR. If the Genesee was considered navigable in the late 19'th century that might explain the bridge height but why then build an underdeck truss when a simple through truss would save space and cost. Answer is probably buried with the engineers who designed it.

tk48states wrote:Thanks to both of you for the responses. Although I lived in Rochester when the Valley was active I never visited the bridge until after abandonment, assume a lower deck was built for the railtrail and approaches were filled in and graded.

No, nothing has been filled in..
When you are looking at the current bridge over the Genesee, the trains ran on the *top* of that structure, not through the middle of it.
On both sides of the river, the concrete supports for the rest of the bridge work are still there, the deck for the track also rested on top of those.
the entire "bridge structure" was much longer than what remains..today only the section directly over the river remains, the rest of the steel bridge work
is gone, only the concrete abutments remain.

walking or biking on the trail going East to West, from East river road and going west, you hit the part where the concrete abutments appear,
then the trail heads downhill..you go down the hill, and you are now *under* the bridge, at the bottom of it.
then when you walk or bike across the river on that bridge, you are lower than where LV trains ran.
To build the rail-trail through that bridge, they had to cut out some of the supports.

Scot

Minor correction: The bridge abutments and intermediate piers are of cut stone, not concrete.

The photo below shows the west abutment and pier. These supported the western most span of the bridge over the PRR rails - now the Genesee Valley Greenway trail.

From the west a massive earthen long carried the rails about 1,500 ft across the west flats to the abutment. The fill was mined off in the 1980's leaving the abutment standing oddly alone. (Photo taken this past Saturday as a group of high school kids helped clean up around the piers as part of "I Love My Park Day").



Several years ago some of the interior X-bracing was cut away so the present wooden footbridge could installed on the lower level of the span. View from the west end:



Interior view of the footbridge:



The LV Genesee Bridge an excellent example of "state of the art" iron bridge construction of 120 years ago. It's well worth a walk (or bike ride) to see it!

...FB

Interesting reading about the reconstruction of the bridge back from 1917-1918...

https://books.google.com/books?id=fCM-A ... 86&f=false" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

Click on the thumbnail below to see a (badly edited and stitched) photo of an engineering drawing of the original structure over the Genesee River. It is / was on display at the RGVRRM in Rush.

The reason for the entire viaduct being as long as it was (1,311 feet) was to factor in the Genesee River at flood stage.

The LV was built later and to more modern construction methods than most other lines, as such, a lot of it was elevated in various places to eliminate unnecessary grades. As also noted, the former bridge takes in the potential floodplain of the Genesee River.

Yes, this bridge was built before the existence of the Mount Morris Dam. Back then the floodplain of the Genesee River was quite broad, the pilings under the approach spans were probably considered as likely to be underwater occasionally during the lifetime of the bridge.

Back During Tropical Storm Agnes (1970's) the river overflowed it's banks and large areas of Scottsville (the "flats" where the horse farms are/where) was underwater. During that storm the Mount Morris Dam filled up to the top. With the dam it was possible to store the water and let it go slowly after the storm and avoid all the flood damage that would have occurred without the dam.

Cheers, KevinK.

FarmallBob wrote:Minor correction: The bridge abutments and intermediate piers are of cut stone, not concrete.

The photo below shows the west abutment and pier.



...FB

I have been to there few times. But in the middle of summer or later...

One thing that I did not notice due to overgrown vegetation, is that there's other wall bit south of LV abutment. Is it retaining wall or ??