Reflections of Summer Past

"Reflections of Summer Past"

Taken: July 11, 2010 - Harrisburg, PA (USA)

The Rockville Bridge, at the time of its completion in 1902, was the longest stone masonry arch railroad viaduct in the world. Constructed between 1900 - 1902 by the Pennsylvania Railroad, it has forty-eight 70-foot spans, for a total length of 3,820 feet (1,164 m).

The bridge crosses the Susquehanna River about 5 miles (8 km) north of Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. The eastern end is in Rockville and the western end is just south of Marysville.

The original bridge on the spot opened on September 1, 1849, when the PRR began operating over it. The Northern Central Railway began to use it after abandoning their Marysville Bridge. The current bridge was built by Italian laborers, who worked for two contractors (Drake & Stratton), one on the east side of the Susquehanna River and one on the west. For most of its life the bridge carried 4 main line tracks. They were reduced to three in the 1980s when the PRR Main Line was modernized across Pennsylvania. In the late 1990s an intermodal container was blown off an intermodal freight train and landed in the river prompting Norfolk Southern to reconfigure the track layout, terminating the wye track to Enola at the west end of the bridge. This reduced the number of main line tracks to two, but left a buffer zone on either side to prevent further containers ending up in the river. Currently, the bridge is used by the Norfolk Southern Railway and Amtrak. The bridge was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1975.

* source: Wikipedia.com