Where is the locomotive? what a mess
|
Wow....did the engine make it across?
|
Yes, the locomotive made it across, and the crew brought it and one car a few miles up the line into Chaska. The track terminates at the sugar mill there, and the locomotive will be stuck there for a while.
|
Great photograph. Well done. I wonder if we will see more of these with all of the snow we had here in the Midwest and the rapid increase in temperatures.
|
This isn't part of the trestle pictured in photo ID 151809 is it?
|
Sure looks like the same bridge. Read the comments...the first one..."Is that bridge safe?"
|
Nope, the one in 151809 is a bridge over the Minnesota River. The trestle that collapsed spans a channel into the Louisville Swamp, about one mile southwest of the larger bridge.
|
Nice shot!
|
| Posted by Mariel on March 31, 2007 | |
Incredible shot! The water looks cold and murky. Were the cars empty and heading to pick up a load of sugar?
|
| Posted by John von Walter on June 5, 2007 | |
The cars were full of sugar at the time of the accident. I think the real causes of the trestle to fail were spring floods in combination with the release of large blocks of ice and deadfall trees pummeling the trestle. Spring 2007 was a strange year on the Minnesota River at Carver, Minnesota. For a week or two the Minnesota River was open from the river crossing trestle at Carver, all the way 32 miles downstream to its mouth at the Mississippi River at Fort Snelling. But upstream from the river crossing trestle at Carver the Minnesota River was frozen over with thick ice. With warm temperatures and spring high water the ice suddenly broke up in a massive turmoil of great blocks of ice which scoured the riverbanks of hundreds, probably thousands, of deadfall trees. Some were more than feet long and four feet in diameter. The ice and trees made their way downstream, I'm certain battering the small railroad bridge at Louisville Swamp that gave way a couple days later. Downstream about a mile from the bridge that later gave way, there were many of us who watched in awe as the roiling, deafening mass of trees, debris, water, and ice pounded into and through the river crossing bridge at Carver. The demonstration of nature's power lasted for hours, with those of us watching fully entranced. Occasionally a huge, long tree would wash against the Carver trestle, spanning two of its support columns and creating a surface dam. Immediately ice, debris, and other trees would back up in a tremendous, awesome pile. Then the huge tree damming the flow would snap, releasing a torrent of material downstream. I thought the bridge was going to give way several times, but amazingly the river crossing railroad bridge at Carver held. A great pile of deadfall trees had built up over the years just behind the river crossing bridge at Carver. Every year the Union Pacific would dispatch a crane to pluck out as many of the large deadfalls as could be reached and send them floating downstream. But the great pile, just out of the crane's reach, continued to build up and eventually creating a silt and sand island in and around it. When the ice first began giving way, in just a few moments this entire deadfall pile, as tall as a two-story house, perhaps a hundred feet long and a hundred feet wide, gave way in in a couple of minutes. I believe that this ice-up phenomenen had happend at least twice before. In 1948 it gave way from the Carver bridge, clearing away wharfs, docks, and barges downstream on the Minnesota River, even into the Mississippi River. In the 1850s a steamboat was wrecked and sunk in the Minnesota River about a mile from Carver. In the spring of 1927 a similar ice-out event brought it to the surface, after 70-odd years under water.
John von Walter, Carver, Minnesota
|
|