Some excerpts from the story:
The Fairview Lift Bridge, named after nearby Fairview, Mont., but actually spanning the Yellowstone River in North Dakota, was completed in the fall of 1913. It was a glorious accomplishment, particularly when considering the construction equipment of the day.As long as we're talking about the railroad, here is the modern way of laying rail.
Shortly after work was completed, a test was conducted on the apparatus used to raise the 1.14 million pound lift section of the bridge. It worked perfectly. That was the one and only time the remarkable marvel of engineering was used.
Construction of the bridge began in 1912. Because the bridge spanned a river considered navigable by the U.S. government, the lift mechanism was required so that steamboats could pass underneath.
However, steamboat traffic had already come to an end on Yellowstone and Missouri rivers due to the availability and reliability of a growing network of railroads. In fact, the Fairview Lift Bridge was built as a railroad crossing as part of the proposed expansion of the Montana Eastern Railway. Thus, the Fairview Lift Bridge's intricate system of cables, counter weights and monstrous pulleys was never used again.
The tunnel is the Cartwright Tunnel at the east end of the bridge - the only railroad tunnel in North Dakota. The tunnel is supported by massive timbers and is still structurally sound today. It is 1,456 feet long, 22 feet wide and 24 feet high. The last train passed through over the bridge and through the tunnel in 1986.
Passenger trains crossed the bridge once each day and freight trains once every other day. Other than at those times, automobiles could cross the bridge on planks laid near the ties. There was a hand-cranked telephone in the leverman's hut that was wired to the depot at Cartwright about 1 1/2 miles east of the tunnel and also Fairview to the west. The phone was used to alert the leverman when a train was approaching from either direction.
A second phone was placed at the west end of the bridge. That phone was to be used by motorists to alert the leverman that they wished to cross the bridge.
A twin, the Snowden Bridge, was constructed during the same time period, approximately 10 miles north of Fairview. It, too, has a lift section consisting of two 108-foot towers. The massive counterweights, consisting of 343 cubic yards of concrete, are so well balanced that they required only a 3-cylinder kerosene engine to set the lifting process in motion. The cost to build each bridge was $500,000.
Update: I was sent the following note regarding the "track laying system" after posting the video above:
Amtrak was the first American RR to use the “Track Laying System." We started using it in the late 1970s. I have seen it in use many times. It is great viewing. The reason we were the first to use the TLS is because we were the first American RR to use concrete RR ties. Note in the video, that they are laying concrete ties. In the 1970s the other US RRs were only too happy to let us experiment with concrete ties. Wooden ties last between 20-30 years, more toward to 20 side depending on the surrounding conditions. In the 70s concrete ties were predicted to last 100 years. I have my doubts, but then who is going to live long enough to test the premise.A funny story about the concrete ties. During the time when Amtrak first purchased them, we were under lots of political pressure to do business with minority owned firms. So Amtrak awarded a contract for a significant number of ties to an African-American-owned firm. This firm of course had never produced even one concrete tie before bidding on our contract. The African-American-owned firm turned around and sublet the contract to a company in South Africa. This was during the height of apartheid, while Mandela was still in prison. Jack Anderson found out and reported the whole thing in his nationally syndicated column. It was not a good day for our purchasing department.
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