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This bridge was built to serve a curved roadway and the truss design is skewed. As such, there are some unusual details. Each truss span is straight, but is placed on the piers at different angles to form an overall curve. The skew is accommodated by a truss design that is asymmetrical. This is true for both the through truss main span and the single pony truss approach span at each end. The trusses each are configured such that one one end of each truss line has a hip vertical, while the other end does not have a hip vertical.
This bridge was rehabilitated and repainted between 2010 and 2012. The painting contractor was Thomas Industrial Coatings. This bridge is therefore one of the few historic metal truss bridges in Illinois outside of Chicagoland that has been rehabilitated. Truss bridge preservation in Illinois outside of Chicagoland is sadly almost non-existent. It would be nice to see more projects like the one which gave the Gale Bridge additional service life.
The Gale Bridge carries an old alignment of IL-3. The current alignment of IL-3 was completed in 1990.
There is also a pony truss bridge on this same old IL-3 roadway a short distance to the south, however as should be apparent from the photos for this photo, it was too dark to photograph the pony truss after documenting this larger and more significant bridge.
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