American_River_Bridge

American_River_Bridge

This is based on a bridge over the American River on the California Central Railroad.
It was built in 1860 but after a few years partially due to a lack of maintainence it
developed a 3-1/2 ft sag in the middle of the main span. Crews were understandably
afraid to cross it. On August 23, 1871 it collapsed in the river. Besides the lack of
maintainence the failure was due to the material used to construct the bridge. Wood
works well in compression but not in tension. The design itself (a lenticular truss)
is good although this was a bit longer then usual. Subsequent bridges of this design
used iron rods for the tension members and held up quite well.

Author: Benjamin R. Dorsey (bendorsey)

American_River_Bridge
• american river bridge.jpg 14.06KB
• concrete15.jpg 300.10KB
• concrete15.texture.txt 33 bytes
• config.txt 2.26KB
• part_1.im 815.59KB
• part_2.im 1.47MB
• wall10.jpg 68.85KB
• wall10.texture.txt 29 bytes
• wood2.jpg 23.21KB
• wood2.texture.txt 28 bytes