ICRR bridge--incredible historical find!

[Zox]

All hail Google, the closest thing to a TARDIS we're going to get before the Eye of Rassilon is completed:

Kankakee Bridge Of Illinois Central R. R. An interesting project completed during the year was a wide bridge for the Illinois Central Railroad at Kankakee, Ill., built as two bridges without interval by the use of the same equipment twice and two separate set-ups of the same centres. This was a 4-track, 6-arch railway bridge, with five 90-foot and one 60-foot barrel arch spans, with spandrel walls and a deck of precast slabs. It is 64 feet wide, face to face at arch rings, and including the piers the structure required about 16,000 cubic yards of concrete. It took the place of a single-track, three-span steel truss bridge, and construction of the new bridge was undertaken without interfering with the old. After the first half of the bridge was completed, tracks were shifted from the steel bridge to it, the older structure was removed, and the remainder of the new bridge was then built.

--The New International Year Book: A Compendium of the World's Progress for the Year 1919, Frank Moore Colby, editor. Published by Dodd, Mead and Company, New York, 1920.[/li][/list]

Search string: kankakee river concrete arch bridge
URL: http://books.google.com/books?id=C1tMAAAAMAAJ&pg=PA115&lpg=PA115&dq=kankakee+river+concrete+arch+bridge&source=bl&ots=US1eKxfKOZ&sig=2wA7iO-1F2AG40IGAh9V-Wquo-s&hl=en&ei=kBWPS7H4PJC6lAfB0dTKDQ&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=9&ved=0CCEQ6AEwCDgK#v=onepage&q=kankakee%20river%20concrete%20arch%20bridge&f=false

I paid $42 for Images of Kankakee Railroads from the Kankakee County Historical Society, and it has a photo showing the previous bridge tagged with an August 1937 date. Guess I know how much the research in that book is really worth...

But despite the frowny-face on that last paragraph, I'm really quite gleeful about this find. I'd despaired of ever finding useful information about the bridge's history. And though I was pretty confident of my photogrammetry work, it's not bad to have confirmation on the dimensions, as well.

[stuntman]

 It's so cool you're modeling that bridge!  I've been past it many times in my younger years. ;D

 Your's Looks Great! 

[Rossford Yard]

I used to see that bridge all the time back in my Illinois days.  It sounds like a great discovery.

I have been researching my namesake Rossford Yard for years and I am still coming up with new, eh, old photos that I figured didn't exist.  How much have you used the internet to search for info?  Or the big library at University of Illinois in Champaign? 

My guess is that for you, the floodgate of info is just starting and you will be having lots of fun with that bridge from here on out. Congrats!

[bicknell]

http://www.bing.com/maps/?v=2&cp=qvk04j7p9zdn&scene=34862571&lvl=1&sty=b&where1=Kankakee

Looks like they could use that single track bridge again today....

[Zox]

I used to see that bridge all the time back in my Illinois days.  It sounds like a great discovery.

I have been researching my namesake Rossford Yard for years and I am still coming up with new, eh, old photos that I figured didn't exist.  How much have you used the internet to search for info?  Or the big library at University of Illinois in Champaign? 

My guess is that for you, the floodgate of info is just starting and you will be having lots of fun with that bridge from here on out. Congrats!

Oh, I've been having fun with that bridge for quite a while now...

From March 2007:



To present:





I've done a ton of Internet research, along with my own "field trips" when I go back to visit my mother in Illinois at Christmastime. But Terraserver, and Bing Maps, and Google Earth, only show me what's there now. That's the reason I was so excited about the Google Books find--it provided information about the history of the bridge that I hadn't been able to obtain up to that point.

I bought a book from the Kankakee Valley Historical Society about Kankakee-area railroads, but as I mentioned above, it turned out to be less useful than I'd hoped.

At your suggestion, I checked the online offerings of the U of I, but everything there is behind a students-only password wall except for the stuff that's sourced from Google--which I can get straight from Google.

[Bruce Bird]

Having been a student at the U of I and being able to get into the old Engineering library I can tell you that it is chock full of good stuff- especially for IC fans.  They have bound volumes of MR that go back to Volume 1, Number 1.  It was a great source at the time.  If you know of someone who is a faculty member at the U of I they may be able to get beyond the pasword for you.

Bruce

PS The IC Hist. Society has a lot of useful documents as well.  Some very nice glass-plate negatives of construction of the railroad.  The ICG cleaned out the old engineering offices in Champaign and dumped it all in a dumpster.  A local employee called the ICHS and tipped them off.  Over a weekend they cleaned this stuff out of the dumpster and hauled it to their offices in Paxton.  Neat stuff!