How Did The Chesapeake And Ohio Northern Railway Company Or C & O Bridge Construction?

During a fast growing economic time, The Chesapeake & Ohio Northern Railway Company, or C&O Railroad for short, had the bridge constructed to expand their railroad even more. The C&O Railroad has a unique and somewhat confusing history that can be traced back to 1836 when the railroad went by the name of Louisa Railroad. Based out of Louisa County, Virginia the rail was a small company that owned a set of tracks from Richmond to Charlottesville. After the company had another change in name to the Virginia Central Railroad in 1850, the Civil War broke out. Virginia Central decided to support the Confederate Army by shipping supplies for battle and in some cases even transporting Troops straight into battle. This caused the Virginia Central lines to be targets of the north where much of the rail was

The area of where the bridge was to cross the Ohio River was said to be one of the hardest places to build but came with some advantages. The section of the river had a solid rock base for the supporting pier to be built on. Since the engineers knew they could build a pier that would not settle they decided on a continuous bridge design. This design type distributes the weight so the steel trusses could be smaller and riveted together. This alone saved an estimates twenty percent of steel that was originally thought to be need to make the bridge cutting down the cost. The two continuous trusses span a collective 1,550 feet across the water. With addition of the north and south approach viaducts, for trains to go under the bridge, the superstructure’s total length is 3,463 feet. The bridge was made to hold two sets of tracks making the width 38 feet and 9 inches. The design called for 27,000 cubic yards of concrete and 13,200 tons of steel with some members being four foot square beams that span a distance of seventy feet. The design was the first step in a long process that would take several years to