Nostalgia & History > UP Henry Ford drawbridge . . .

. . replaced in 1996 with a two track verticle lift bridge because of future major expansion of activity with the ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach opening multiple container facilities on Terminal Island the Henry Ford drawbridge, built in 1926 served Terminal Island for seventy years carrying trains of the Union Pacific, Pacific Electric, Santa Fe and Harbor Belt Line over the Cerritos Channel. In Feb '79 UP's afternoon Harbor Local crossed the bridge to get to it's joint with Harbor Belt Line Terminal Island yard (top) and in November '91 UP's morning Mead Local was crossing the bridge (middle) to get from the "mainland" to the island. The new two track replacement bridge named "Badger Bridge" taken from the island side in about 2000. All these are reposts from some time or other.
JB



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 08/28/14 07:54 by 3rdswitch.

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Great photos.Bill Webb

WOW, that is some piece of construction work. Nice coverage, JB!

Lance

That area reminds me of the Walthers Model RR catalog, giant bridges and cranes, trains, gi-normous ships with blue skies. Ok, grey skies.

My dad worked on the lift mechanism's for the Cmdr Heim lift bridge (Big X).

Construction is currently ongoing that will eventually replace the Heim bridge with a fixed, cast in place box girder bridge. Demolition of the Schuyler Heim lift bridge will probably start some time next year.

Great memories. Been over the Henry Ford bridge countless times on the UP and also when called off the xtra board for the Harbor Belt jobs. The last time I went over the bridge was on the HBL when I had just marked up as a new engineer and had to take a train of rutile ore up to Badger siding (which was the siding on the north side of the bridge) to run around the train. At that time the bridge was kept in the open position until you called to have it lowered to cross onto the "Island". I had the HBL 101 and 102 (gutless GP7s with no dynamics and no sand) and had a heck of a time trying to keep the heavy train under control heading towards the open bridge. The main and siding leading up to the bridge was in a bowl so the rear of the train was shoving me towards the bridge. The train barely fit in the siding and I had to take it to the limit which was only a few car lengths from the open bridge. I was thinking about how fast a GP7 would sink in the channel. Needless to say, we were able to pull in the siding and have the bridge lowered so we could run around the train.
Now the bridge is kept in the lowered position as there are more trains crossing the channel than there are boats going through.-BMT

Great shots, JB. Really like that first one with the pair of UP 30s.

Thanks for sharing,

~Ryan

I've never seen a view that showed those truly massive counterweights. Wow. I've seen a lot of bascule lift spans, but those are the largest counterweights I think that I've ever seen.

MC
Columbia, Missouri