Eastern Railroad Discussion > McKinley Bridge

I was in St. Louis area recently poking around the McKinley Bridge, former Mississippi crossing for the Illinois Terminal Interurban. While the trackage is gone from the bridge, it still exists (but is cut off from the bridge) on the Illinois and Missouri sides of the river. At Venice, the trestle is collapsed while in St. Louis, the elevated line looks rusted and unused. Amazing that so many remnants, including old signals and dangling trolley wire--still are there. Someone told me this elevated line is still used--at least part of it. Anyone know how it is used, and by whom? Also, when did operation on the bridge terminate? I know the passenger service ended around 1958, but I thought the freight service crossed the bridge for many years thereafter.

The elevated operation you heard about was the part south of Branch street to the St. Louis Post-Dispatch printing plant on the north edge of downtown St. Louis. An outfit called Railway Switching Service of Missouri (RSSM) delivers cars of newsprint. The south end of the line is actually underground, where the switch engine is kept. I haven't checked this operation out lately, but it historically has been during the night.

That sounds interesting. I'll have to check it out. It would make sense that it would be underground--it probably uses the old Illinois Terminal subway that ran about a mile to the depot. I think the Post Dispatch is printed in the old Globe Democrat building, which was the Illinois Terminal Depot also. Any idea as to when the tracks on the bridge were pulled up? I thought it was interesting that St. Louis is expanding its light rail transit system into parts of Illinois. You would think they'd recycle the old Illinois Terminal/McKinley Bridge and Subway operation and somehow tie it in to the present system.

The McKinley Bridge and its related structures and rail line is very interesting.

The Illinois Terminal tracks it carried came up on the Missouri side via a rather steep ramp, a heavily-engineering steel trestle from the riverfront next to the CB&Q tracks, then swung across the eastbound traffic lane to reach the center of the west approach, west of the main channel truss spans. In the three central through-truss spans, the tracks ran through the center of the spans, with the road lanes on "outriggers" to the sides of the main truss spans. In the original design, only the original two tracks (later single track) occupied the center of the through-truss spans, but at some point early in the bridge's history traffic lanes were also established there, with the track running "street-running" style with road traffic through the center of the trusses. The "outrigger" traffic lanes were maintained, and still operate today.

The tracks were pulled from the center trusses and east and west road appraoches, and the pavement in the center of the trusses replaced about five years ago, if memory serves. Before replacement, you always took the "outrigger" lanes if you were smart -- you'd be guaranteed to bust something in your vehicle's suspension if you drove the lanes with the track in the center of the trusses. The pavement in later years, once very good, was just in terrible shape.

At the Illinois end, the process was reversed, with the track crossing the eastbound traffic lane again as it turned sharply to the left to go down an approach ramp to the ground level and the toll booth and connection with Illinois Highway 3. The track continued on eastward alongside the Union Electric Venice generating plant, on a high, massively-engineering (and probably over-engineered) steel trestle for about 1/2 mile.

Then, where the line crosses Illinois Highway 3, the bridge abruptly changed to a tall wood trestle about 50 feet high. It is that trestle that is collapsing into the farm fields between Highway 3 and the TRRA's Madison Yard. Who owns it? Unknown. The final successor to the IT was of course NS, but it's tough to imagine NS allowing this trestle to gradually collapse on its own, with the possible liability that might create. If I were to guess (and it is purely that, a guess), the current owner may be the City of Venice, Illnois, a small economically-depressed community which owns the bridge, and may also have received title to the approaches somehow. Venice can barely afford to care for the main bridge itself our of toll revenue, and indeed the St. Louis Post-Dispatch reported last week that due to engineering inspections the bridge itself has now been load-limited, with heavy trucks being barred from using it. That will further depress Venice's toll revenues, and make it even harder for the community to pay off the bonds, on which they are already behind in payments.

A previous posting is correct that the southern end of the IT line is still used by Railway Switching Service of Missouri (RSSM) to deliver newsprint to the Post-Dispatch. The deliveries are greatly reduced from years past, since the P-D now operates only one press line at the downtown facility, the others having been moved to their Northwest Plant in suburban Maryland Heights (served by the UP, nee-Cotton Belt/SP, ex-RI) years ago.

The building the Post is now in was formerly that of the now-defunct Globe-Democrat newspaper. But a prior posting is not correct that this was the IT's terminal. Here's what happened: the Post moved from its old building about five blocks south on 12th St (today Tucker Blvd.) to the Globe's building. At the same time, the Globe moved to the old Illinois Terminal building. That's where the IT station was, not where the Post is today. The Post's current building was always a newspaper building, never a railroad station.

It's pretty easy to tell the buildings apart. The Post-Dispatch, of course, is still in the building it swapped with the Globe. You can tell it's the original Globe building by the carved stone eagle above the main entrance. This was the Globe's hallmark at the time the building was built while E. Lansing Ray was the Globe's publisher. Ray was tremendous civic booster, and was the guy who encouraged a group of St. Louis businessmen to back Charles Lindbergh in his plan to fly across the Atlantic, and suggested to Lindbergh that the airplane be called the "Spirit of St. Louis". The rest, as they say, is history. But don't think that the great event happened there in the Globe's building in Ray's office; it took place at the old, original Racquet Club on North Kingshighway in the city's Central West End.

The track at the point of the current Post/former Globe building is actually under the traffic lanes of Tucker Blvd./12th Street. If you look closely at the traffic lanes there, you can see the expansion joints in the roadway to indicate that what appears to be ground-level roadway is actually elevated. The expansion joints were replaced about three years ago with new elastomeric joints. The Post's sub-basement newsprint storage room opens up onto the track on the street side of their building below Tucker Blvd/12th St. Newsprint rolls are brought up to the first floor pressroom via a huge freight elevator.

The IT's station building (originally called the Terminal Building, I believe) is one block south of the Post/former Globe building. It's now called the Globe Building, and has the big sign with the revolving globe atop it above the main entrance that the Globe-Democrat installed in the 1960s while Richard Amberg was publisher. The carved stonework above the main entry shows interurban cars to further identify it as the IT's original building. Another hallmark: the distinctive first-floor windows which are shaped at the tops like a bridge truss. The IT's passenger platforms were in the basement of this building, with a very tight-radius turning loop to gets trains turned and headed back northward (eastbound) at the stub-end station. The ticket office and waiting rooms were on the first floor, and the IT had offices upstairs, along with space leased to other tenants.

The building, like the McKinley Bridge and its approaches, is massively engineered. It has been successfully redeveloped into an office "condo" that's popular with smaller businesses not needing fancier space, and small manufacturing operations. Lately it has increasingly become a telecommunications "hotel", a new trend for older, redevloped office space for siting web servers, telecomm switches and routers and such for internet and telecom companies. It is well suited to such use due to its massive floor loading capacity (that stuff can be suprisingly heavy once it's all installed), and proximity to a fiber-optic cable loop built through downtown about five years ago. Like the Pennsy, the IT built for keeps.

Back to bridge itself. It was originally called the St. Louis Bridge, but later renamed for the president of the IT, Mr. McKinley (sorry, don't recall his first name), not U.S. President William McKinley, as many people think. It was designed by one of the great bridge engineers of all time, Ralph Modjeski, near the turn of the century. Perhaps the other Modjeski bridge that railfans in the Midwest know best is the Metropolis Bridge over the Ohio River between Metropolis, Ill. and a point just west of Paducah, Ky., which carries the IC's Edgewood Cutoff and the BNSF's (ex-CB&Q) southern Illinois "coal line" across the river. Unlike the McKinley Bridge, it is still in railroad use today with good traffic levels.

Modjeski was an interesting guy. He is widely considered one of the great civil engineers of all time, and virtually any book about the history of American bridges recognizes him extensively. He was very cultured and quite the raconteur, an interesting contrast to a guy who designed gritty, very industrial-age bridges. His mother was Helena Modjeska, one of the great operatic divas of the late 1800s. Even she has an interesting railroad connection. For many years the Wabash had a heavyweight open-platform observation car called the "Helena Modjeska" in her honor which operated regularly on trains such as the Blue Bird and Banner Blue before they were streamlined with Budd equipment. I have never determined how the Wabash settled on this name for the car. I think it was a company-owned, and not a Pullman-owned car, but perhaps it was Pullman-owned, or the Wabash bought it from Pullman and left the Pullman name intact. The car had a huge, deep rear open platform, which was so deep that there were actually windows enclosing part of it as a sort of "side-curtain" before one reached the rear door of the car. It was also distinguished by a white, half-dome-like disk above the platform, which may have had a light built into it to spead the light more evenly over the entire rear platform. I strongly suspect that this may have been a Pullman pool car for some time, and might have been used for political specials and other celebrity moves where the larger rear platform and "light disk" would have been desirable. A car much like it, perhaps a twin, exists today, the "Chief Keokuck" (correct spelling is with the 'c' before the 'k'), which was (and may still be) owned by the Keokuk Junction Railway in Keokuk, Iowa (without the 'c' in front of the 'k'). It has operated on a number of fantrips in the Midwest several years back, and is a wonderful car, which I've ridden on twice on excursions. When I rode it, the interior had been restored to the original Pullman style, with 1920's-style furniture and the ceiling beltline stencil. If you get a chance to ride it on a trip, do it. It's one of the great ones.

The engineering enterprise that Ralph Modjeski started is today the engineering firm of Modjeski & Masters, one of the nation's leading bridge and civil engineering firms. M&M still does a lot of railroad bridge work, although most of their practice is for highway bridges. In their founder's tradition, they have won tons of design awards through the years. In recent years on the railroad side of the business they provided the engineering services for the rehabilitation of the vital and very busy Thebes Bridge over the Mississippi near Cape Girardeau, Mo., and the TRRA's equally busy and vital MacArthur Bridge over the Mississippi at St. Louis. In both cases, the core of M&M's work was to advise on the engineering replacement of the massive steel pins at the truss joints, which were built in the pin-connected truss style common in the early 1900s before composite welded/riveted or all-welded components such as used today were available.

ironmtn

Mark Cedeck
Farmington, MO