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St. Paul Union Pacific Vertical-lift Rail Bridge

Field	Value
bridge_name	St. Paul Union Pacific Vertical-lift Rail Bridge
image	St. Paul Union Pacific Vertical-lift Rail Bridge.jpg
image_size	300px
caption	The St. Paul Union Pacific Vertical-lift Rail Bridge with the Robert Street Bridge in the background
coordinates
crosses	Mississippi River
carries	One track of the Union Pacific Railroad
locale	St. Paul, Minnesota
design	Vertical-lift bridge
mainspan	192 feet
length	940 feet
width	21.9 feet
below	72 feet (with span lifted)
open	1913
maint	Union Pacific Railroad
id	L332

The St. Paul Union Pacific Vertical-lift Rail Bridge is a vertical-lift bridge that spans the Mississippi River in downtown St. Paul, Minnesota, United States. It is one of only three vertical-lift bridges along the Mississippi River, along with the Hastings Rail Bridge in Hastings, Minnesota, and the Wabash Bridge in Hannibal, Missouri. It was designed by Waddell & Harrington and built in 1913. In 1925, the north end of the bridge was raised about 16 ft to tie in with tracks that served the St. Paul Union Depot yard. The vertical-lift span has 105 ft towers, and the electrical lift system was built with a possible 45 ft elevation. However, by 1973, the amount of lift was reduced to 37 ft because of aging of the equipment.

The bridge was originally built by the Chicago Great Western Railroad, which later became part of the Chicago and North Western Transportation Company. The Robert Street Bridge, built later in 1926, had to be carefully engineered around the railroad bridge.

In April 1997, high water on the Mississippi River reached the bottom of the span. The Union Pacific Railroad spotted a train of hopper cars laden with rocks on the bridge to help anchor it and keep it from being washed away.

In 2021, Union Pacific proposed demolishing the bridge and building a replacement with a drawbridge design.

References

{{cite book

References

Railway Engineering and Maintenance. United States: Simmons-Boardman Publishing Company, Volume 22 1926. p 134
(9 December 2021). "Downtown St. Paul is likely going to lose its historic railroad lift bridge". [[MinnPost]].

Info: Wikipedia Source

This article was imported from Wikipedia and is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Content has been adapted to SurfDoc format. Original contributors can be found on the article history page.

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