Uncredited photos on this page taken by: Nathan Holth and Luke Gordon. Unless stated in a caption, all photos are Copyright with All Rights Reserved. Learn about reuse of our photos.
Removing the first part of the deck. The only minor challange in removing the deck was the fact that the wooden planks extended under the railing. Because the railings were not removed during the project, the planks kept getting stuck under the railing.
Removal of deck from the center panel.
Deck stringers after a section of the wooden deck was removed. Some of the deck stringers were so deteriorated that they made Swiss cheese look solid and practically fell apart under their own weight.
Preparing to remove the first group of deck stringers.
Deck stringers being removed.
Views of bridge during deck stringer removal.
Preparing to remove deck stringers.
Deck stringers being removed.
Bridge after removal of deck and deck stringers.
Removing nuts holding lateral bracing in place.
A few different options existed for removing floor beams. An attempt was first made to see if the hanger bolts could easily be removed by heating the nuts to expand them. This proved too difficult to be worth the effort.
Another method was to see if the bottom chord connection pins could be easily driven out. This required holding the floorbeam in place with the crane. Setup for this is shown in these photos.
Attempting to pry at the pin to get it loose and make it ready to be driven out. This did not work.
In preparation for a second attempt, the tension on the pin was removed with these chains and jacks.
Second attempt to drive the pin out. The pin still would not come loose.
Between the challenges of driving the pin out and the fact that the floor beams had enough section loss that they would be replaced in restoration anyway, the decision was made to simply cut the floor beams out.
General views of the bridge at this point in the project.
The trusses were secured and braced by welding angles to the end posts before the removal of the second, final, floorbeam.
Preparing floor beam for removal.
Cutting out the floor beam. Note that this method left the hangers and lateral bracing connections intact so they can be reused during restoration if possible.
The final floor beam is removed.
General views of bridge with all floor beams removed. The bridge is now just two independent truss webs sitting on the abutments. Each truss was ready to be simply picked off the abutments and placed on the ground.
Removing the first truss.
General views of bridge site with first truss removed.
Abutment detail after truss removal.
View of where one of the bearing locations was.
Preparing second truss for removal.
Removing the second truss.
The trusses are set on land, ready to be prepared for dismantling and shipping.
Overview of bridge site after both trusses were removed.
