Western Railroad Discussion > Ft. Sumner, NM - Pecos River Bridge

Another of my "must stop" places in NM is the Pecos River Bridge in Fort Sumner. Today had a 3-way meet there, as the river is a bottleneck due to single track. It will be interesting how they will build a new bridge across here.
1. A Z-Train crosses first, heading west
2. Waiting for the Z on the west side was the short vehicle train I saw earlier in Vaughn
3. After the vehicle, next comes the waiting Manifest, crossing the mighty bridge over the mighty Pecos...well it is a river
Lothar
Corinth, TX

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lotharb Wrote:
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> Another of my "must stop" places in NM is the
> Pecos River Bridge in Fort Sumner. Today had a
> 3-way meet there, as the river is a bottleneck due
> to single track. It will be interesting how they
> will build a new bridge across here.

Thanks for the great photos of a less often photographed area. To see what the BNSF will have to do to build a new bridge, look a few hundred miles east on the Panhandle Sub at Canadian, TX were the BNSF built a second bridge across the Canadian River. That bridge consists of several (I think 28) 106 foot long steel spans on concrete piers. I remarkable structure that sits much high that the parallel original bridge, something that I doubt will need to be done here.

Again, thanks for sharing.

Did ya say Hello to ' Billy ' . . ? Luv that little museum out there . . never forget it.

Not today, but I have heard that comment from others. I am so fixated on the RR, that I neglect to stop there. I must do it one of these times.
Lothar

I wonder how often does the river there run bank full?

santafedan Wrote:
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> I wonder how often does the river there run bank
> full?

Probably only during a 500 year flood event...something on the level of a hurricane remnant coming up from Mexico and dumping A LOT of rain on the plains of eastern New Mexico.

New Mexico usually does its best to make sure that not a drop of water from the Pecos or the Rio Grande makes its way into Texas - not that there's a whole lot to begin with.

Not only do they not want water to get into Texas, they try to keep it out of southern New Mexico. The Pecos is dammed upriver from Ft. Sumner.Just above where the Pecos flows into Lake Amistad
(near Del Rio, TX, on the UP Sunset Route) it has high salinity. And Elephant Butte reservoir near Truth or Consequence, NM, was very low last time I looked.