Tunkhannock Viaduct

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Tunkhannock Viaduct
Tunkhannock Viaduct, as seen from Route 11.
Crosses	Tunkhannock Creek
Locale	Nicholson, Pennsylvania
Design	Deck arch bridge
Longest span	Ten spans of 180 feet (55 m)
Total length	2375 feet
Width	Two tracks
Clearance below	240 feet
Opening date	1915
Maps and aerial photos

Tunkhannock Viaduct (also known as the Nicholson Bridge) is a concrete deck arch bridge that spans the Tunkhannock Creek in Nicholson, Wyoming County, Pennsylvania in the United States.

The bridge contains about 167,000 cubic yards (128,000 m³) of concrete and 1240 tons of steel. It is 2,375 feet (724 m) long and 240 feet (73 m) tall when measured from the creek bed (300 feet tall from the bedrock). The bridge was built as part of the Clark's Summit-Hallstead Cutoff, which was part of a project of the Lackawanna Railroad to revamp a winding and hilly system. This rerouting was built between Scranton, Pennsylvania and Binghamton, New York. All thirteen piers were excavated to bedrock, which was up to 138 feet (42 m) below ground level. Almost half of the bulk of the bridge is underground.

The bridge was built by the Delaware, Lackawanna and Western Railroad and was designed by Abraham Burton Cohen [1]. Construction on the bridge began in May of 1912, and dedication took place on November 6, 1915 [2].

[edit] References

Plowden, David (2002). Bridges: The Spans of North America. New York, NY: W.W. Norton and Company.
Tunkhannock Viaduct. Historic American Engineering Record. Retrieved on 2006-07-02.
Tunkhannock Viaduct. ASCE History and Heritage of Civil Engineering. Retrieved on 2006-07-03.
Nicholson BridgeComplete list of facts and history.