Worst bridge you’ve crossed?

Arcadia is above Boring. Maybe a few miles as the bird flies. There we had steam up days on the old Arcadia Grounds up there. I'll map it and see if I can get this Boring to come up, Arcadia is a freaking city compared to this one.

Ok Boring has had several engineering works bringing the two roadways down to track level so that's out. There is a wooden bridge at Piney Grove Road which is similar but not the exact one. However there is the newer concrete one I remember not being there in my time so this must have been it.

Arcadia is very close, reckon about three miles or four at most.

The railroad in it's day was all about the stone train from Bittenger PA off Rte 30 Quarry. It's destination every night was the Beth Steel Works in Sparrows Point. All of it has been dynamited and built into Condos now. Most of it anyhow. If they still haul stone from PA on that line it will probably be some kind of export on the sea.

Google Maps

 

The first time I ever drove a motorcoach across the Chesapeake Bay Bridge, back in 2004, I was driving westbound from Salisbury, Maryland, taking a school group to the Smithsonian in DC. It’s the newer span, three lanes, and they were doing something to the middle lane and had it blocked off for a quarter of a mile with Jersey barriers, making both other lanes considerably skinnier. I swear it seemed like I had under a foot of room on either side. My butt cheeks were clenched!

In 2010, I-40 in western North Carolina was closed by landslides, and I was driving a truck from Winston-Salem out west. The official detour was I-26 up to I-81, but my map showed US-25 was a much shorter route, and I reckoned I was smarter than the herd (I was wrong). That’s a hairy road, and the Wolf Creek Bridge over the French Broad River (my favorite river name ever!) is skinny and has hairpin turns on either end. I just looked at it on Google Street view and it doesn’t look that bad, but I remember praying that there were no trucks coming from the other direction.

 

Being a Land Rover nerd I've always been into the Camel Trophy so when bad bridges came up I couldn't help myself. These guys are nuts.

 

Sometimes during the first span years they only had three lanes, you had arrows telling you which ones to use. Usually two east and one west depending on time of day. If I remember right there isnt much room between you and so and so coming the other way. Couple of feet thereabouts.

Before 1955 I think it was, you had a ferry, could be a day or so to get across and that was the first of two water crossing problems to OC until the US 50 was built. The second crossing (I forget the name) was a drawbridge until the replacement was high enough to eliminate the first.

That part of the Ches. Bay is a holding ground of ships waiting to dock at Baltimore. Be about two hundred or so some times. Below it at the Ocean is the famous CBBT from Norfolk across the OCEAN with two tunnels (Or was it three.) almost 29 miles to the Maryland eastern shore. Some days the sea is not good in storms and if you crossed at 80000 pounds that also meant rollers almost reaching the pavement you are on plus winds just about high enough to push you around a bit. Have a good ride.

 

When I was a kid, there were three drawbridges along US 50 going to the beach. Kent Narrows, Cambridge, and Vienna. Or if you cut over on 404, there was one in Denton. Folks today have no idea how tedious a trip to the beach used to be!

 

I drove coach buses over the CBBT a lot, not that much fun during a storm!

 

You beat me to the Hwy 4 bridge across Middle River. Went across last year and met a SWIFT driver mid span. We both slowed to an idle as we passed each other and our mirrors just barely kissed. I felt bad for the woman driving the SWIFT truck. She looked scared to death.

Does anybody else have a problem with the Marquam bridge I-5 north through Portland OR? When you're in the hammer lane, there is a retainer wall about 24 inches high separating you from a very long drop into the Columbia River. I've often wondered if a rig or car has gone over.

 

I know, but it still unnerves me being over the river