Tunkhannock Viaduct
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| Tunkhannock Viaduct | |
 Tunkhannock Viaduct as seen from Route 11, which was the original right-of-way of the Lackawanna Railroad through Nicholson prior to the building of the bridge. Note the westbound freight train on the bridge is dwarfed by the massive structure. |
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| Crosses | Tunkhannock Creek |
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| Locale | Nicholson, Pennsylvania |
| Design | Deck arch bridge |
| Longest span | Ten spans of 180 feet |
| Total length | 2375 feet |
| Width | Two tracks |
| Clearance below | 240 feet |
| Opening date | 1915 |
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Tunkhannock Viaduct is a concrete deck arch bridge that spans Tunkhannock Creek in Nicholson, Pennsylvania. The bridge, containing about 167,000 cubic yards of concrete and 1240 tons of steel, is the biggest and most impressive concrete bridge in America. It was opened in 1915.
The bridge was built by the Delaware, Lackawanna and Western Railroad and was designed by Abraham Burton Cohen [1].
The bridge was built as part of the Clark's Summit-Hallstead Cutoff, which was part of an ambitious program of the Lackawanna Railroad to revamp a winding and hilly system. This rerouting was built between Scranton, Pennsylvania and Binghamton, New York. This bridge and the Martins Creek Viaduct near Kingsley were considered the engineering wonder of their time. All 13 piers were excavated to bedrock, which was up to 138 feet below ground level. Almost half of the bulk of the bridge is underground.
[edit] Construction
Construction began in May 1912. It took 163,000 cubic yards of concrete, 2,280,000 pounds of reinforcing steel and 185,000 bbls. of cement [2]. The bridge was dedicated on November 6, 1915 [3].
[edit] References
- Plowden, David (2002). Bridges: The Spans of North America. New York, NY: W.W. Norton and Company.
- Tunkhannock Viaduct. Historic American Engineering Record. Retrieved on 2006-07-02.
- Tunkhannock Viaduct. ASCE History and Heritage of Civil Engineering. Retrieved on 2006-07-03.
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