Whitaker bridge for the Great Allegheny Passage

A time lapse of the bridge being lifted into place over Norfolk Southern and Union Railroad tracks in Whitaker, Pennsylvania, a bit upstream of Rankin Bridge. This flyover is a critical link in the Steel Valley Trail along the Monongahela River, which forms part of the Great Allegheny Passage bike/pedestrian trail from Pittsburgh toward Washington DC. See http://www.steelvalleytrail.org/ and http://www.atatrail.org/ .

In this view we're looking south. The Monongahela River is on the left, and the Pitt Fall ride at Kennywood is visible on the horizon at right. I started shooting at 6:47am and finished at 7:42, when Union RR shooed us off the flyover out of "liability" concerns. I pushed the shutter button every 5 seconds when there was something interesting happening, but only once a minute when not.

As of July 2010, this section of trail is not open (it will take months to build the ramps up to this flyover) but at least the hardest part -- this flyover and another like it a little south of Kennywood -- is done. For now the trail starts in Duquesne at Grant Ave.

Still photos of this construction: http://picasaweb.google.com/pheckbert/WhitakerAndPortPerryFlyoversSteelValley...

Steel Valley Trail Council relies on volunteers. If you'd like to help maintain, publicize, and build these trails, see steelvalleytrail.org .

Audio: "Working in the Coal Mine", Devo.

Category:

Travel & Events

Tags:

• steel valley trail
• great allegheny passage
• bike trail
• bike
• kennywood
• monongahela
• pittsburgh
• time lapse

[RickRadebaugh]

Great Video.Can you keep us posted on the progress of the trail. It is complete from Cumberland to Duquesne and the remaining sections have been secured. I think SandCastle has agreed to allowing a right of way between the park and the rive.

[paulheckbert]

@RickRadebaugh As of October 2010, agreement has been reached with the owners of Sandcastle waterpark, so design and construction of the last few miles of trail to Pittsburgh are proceeding, and should be done by late 2011. Youtube seems to block my attempts to post a URL here, so try a web search for sandcastle allegheny passage post-gazette

[TheSBimage]

that looked easy enough :)

[paulheckbert]

@TheSBimage The construction workers must have had it very carefully planned: they were given a window of 4 hours maximum during which the work had to be completed. Norfolk Southern closed those two busiest rail lines on the right during that time.

Note that the bridge was so big it arrived by truck in sections, as did the crane itself. They used a small crane to assemble the big crane. And they put down that "road" of wooden beams and gravel to allow the monster crane to cross 2 or 3 tracks.

[cherd1971]

thats so neat