Photos of railroad bridges - Kentucky



















last updated: 07/20/04


all text and photographs
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© 2000-2004 Dave Honan
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David.Honan
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Blair Town While climbing a 2.2% grade out of the Levisa Fork valley, CSX's Coal Run Sub crosses the Clevinger Branch on this curved deck girder bridge. (April 06, 2004)
Catlettsburg Spanning the Big Sandy River between Catlettsburg, KY, and Kenova, WV, is this massive through truss bridge. Although small in comparison to the Sciotoville Bridge (below) or NS' ex-N&W bridge over the Ohio River at Kenova, WV, this structure was designed to carry the heavy coal traffic bound from the West Virginia coalfields to Great Lakes ports. (April 05, 2004)
Coal Run Jct. CSX's Coal Run Sub crosses the Levisa Fork of the Big Sandy River on this curved deck girder bridge. (April 06, 2004)
Elkhorn City

Three views of CSX's ex-L&N Pool Point Bridge over the Russell Fork, near Breaks Interstate Park just east of Elkhorn City. In the second view, a set of pushers return northward light after helping a southbound coal train up to Sandy Ridge Tunnel (April 06, 2004). At bottom-right, a northbound train of empties crosses the bridge on a cloudy spring morning (April 07, 2004).
Garrison This arch bridge carries the CSX Cincinnati Sub over Kinniconick Creek. The creek was rather swollen this day, as demonstrated by the flooded road. (April 05, 2004)
Hall

CSX's E&BV Sub climbs continuously after leaving Martin Yard and, after Kite, climbs well above Beaver Creek. Thus, in Hall, the C&O had to build two large viaducts to span intersecting valleys. At top-left is Bridge 372, measuring 700' over 9 spans as it crosses the valley of the Arnold Fork. Just down the road is Bridge 384, an 11-span, 859' structure spanning the West Fork (bot-left). At right, CSXT 696 leads empty coal train N941 across the West Fork viaduct; the Chesapeake & Ohio heritage of the structure is still quite clear. (April 07, 2004)
Henderson

It's tough to describe the old L&N (now CSX) bridge over the Ohio River at Henderson... "huge" and "massive" just don't seem to do it justice. The only way to demonstrate is to offer a comparison: Notice how Q651 is utterly dwarfed by the structure. (March 23, 2002)

Bridge statistics: 628 concrete slab spans (totaling 11,304'), 60 deck plate girder spans (totaling 4,842'), 1 deck riveted truss span (235'), and 5 through riveted truss spans (totaling 2,662'). Total bridge length: 19,043 feet, or 3.61 miles (including approaches).

Henderson A towboat passes under the Henderson Bridge, struggling upriver against the fast-flowing current of the swollen Ohio. (November 19, 2003)
Levisa Jct. At Levisa Junction, a short spur off the CSX Big Sandy Sub crosses the Levisa Fork on this bridge to access a small loadout on the east bank of the river.

Read an interesting history of the former Levisa Sub, the Johns Creek Branch, and the Coal Run Sub written by Robert Vaughn.

Limedale

A couple miles east of South Portsmouth, KY, is CSX's massive Sciotoville Bridge, a two-span, 1,550-foot continuous truss bridge over the Ohio River. The structure, the heaviest continuous truss bridge on the continent, was designed by David Steinman and built by Gustav Lindenthal between 1914-17 for the Chesapeake & Ohio Railway. (April 05, 2004)

Below, the Sciotoville Bridge is silhouetted against a twilit sky as the last rays of light were disappearing on Friday, May 03, 2002.