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Texas: East, North Central, Panhandle and South Plains and West » East Texas » Huntsville to Livingston » Riverside (Walker County) » Railroad Swing Bridge

Railroad Swing Bridge

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1903. Across the Trinity River, downriver and visible from TX 19 bridge

Once a common feature where a railroad crossed a river, a swing bridge allowed steamboat traffic to pass where riverbanks were too low for a bridge to be built high enough for boat clearance. The bridge, built by the Houston and Great Northern Railroad, is a steel Pratt Truss structure 150 feet in length and cantilevered from a massive pillar in the middle of the river. A giant gear on top of the pillar, which was connected to a motor, rotated the bridge’s arms to clear the river channel for boat traffic. The bridge was operated only two times before it was welded in place in 1925 following a flood. The Trinity River Swing Bridge is the last bridge of this type in Texas still in place.

Writing Credits

Author: 
Gerald Moorhead et al.
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Data

What's Nearby

Trinity Chapel African Methodist Episcopal Church
Old Red Schoolhouse (Trinity School)
U.S. Post Office

Citation

Gerald Moorhead et al., "Railroad Swing Bridge", [Riverside, Texas], SAH Archipedia, eds. Gabrielle Esperdy and Karen Kingsley, Charlottesville: UVaP, 2012—, http://sah-archipedia.org/buildings/TX-02-HL10.

Print Source

Buildings of Texas

Buildings of Texas: East, North Central, Panhandle and South Plains, and West, Gerald Moorhead and contributors. Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 2019, 29-29.

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