Railway suspension bridge...

... I found this whilst doing a search on old photos...

http://www.timbresponts.fr/articles_et_publications/les_ponts_gisclard.htm

Possibly of interest to anyone contemplating an unusual design of bridge for their line?

Very interesting, I know the one for the "train Jaune" very well ; my grand mother had a house in the village at the begenning of the line at Villefranche, we took that train a lot.

A good link, I didn’t know there were any suspension bridges in real life for trains, I thought they were too flexible. You live and learn.

There was a suspension bridge joining US and Canada at Niagara Falls built in the mid-19th century. It had two decks, one carrying railway and the second for other traffic. It stood for about 50 years before being replaced by a new, larger bridge. It was the first successful railway suspension bridge and was considered an engineering marvel in its day.

Hi Clive,

Thanks for sharing the link. During the old times, my grand parents loves riding a train. The sad thing is, train ended her life, If I'm not mistaken she's about to move to Spain when the rail road broke and the train suddenly fell down.

Hoping no more train accident will happen.

Carmel

Isn't the Brooklyn Bridge in New York a double road and railway suspension bridge? But yes, I agree, I was unaware there were any pure railway suspension bridges because unlike road and pedestrian traffic a great load gets put on the structure in a very small area which I understand is not a good thing for suspension bridges.

Some super old pics there Clive, thanks for finding!

Of course, unless we have trawled the postcard archives courtesy of our friends at Delcampe, then the day's work simply will not have been done!

Here's a couple of interesting variants on the same idea:



And even a double-track version:

Great find Clive! what a valuable resource Delcampe is. I even found some old pics of my home town Tottenham on there!

mikey

The Roche-Taillade photo is interesting- notice the rails head off into what appears to be a tunnel at the far end of the bridge.

That second photo is surely a roadway bridge but with tramlines laid on it.

...is it a cow passing through the bridge rail? I remember the train Hitler used to move during the end of Nazi Gov. Here some portion of the inside.

Very interesting ! Thanks for sharing.

Jean-Pierre

Clive - thanks for the introduction to Delcampe. Notice how the price rockets when there is a train in the picture!. I have never understood post card collecting especially as the old ones are out of copyright and the images freely available on the internet. Previously I had assumed that the high prices were because of copyright.

Getting back to suspension bridges if they do work for what seem to be slow light secondary lines why are they so rare. They do seem easier to build for the tunnel/bridge/tunnel etc mountain routes than the large arched structures. But then I am a surveyor not an engineer.

Peter