The Bollman Bridge

The Bollman Bridge. A Rare Iron Railroad Bridge. , Wendel Bollman was a pioneer iron bridge builder in America. At fourteen he marched in the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad's 1828 inaugural parade, and the next year he helped lay the first track as a B&O carpenter. He first taught himself to build wooden railroad bridges, and in 1852 patented his own unique truss form for assembling iron bridges., He formed his own company in 1858 and continued to design bridges for the B&O and other railroads. His iron bridges were eventually replaced as railroads began to use larger, heavier trains, and as steel replaced iron in bridge construction., This rare iron bridge was built in 1871 to carry the B&O over Wills Creek east of Meyersdale, and in 1910 it was moved to carry a farm road over the B&O tracks west of Meyersdale. Slated for demolition, the bridge was rescued and moved a second time in 2006 to serve as a bridge for the trail. It is 81 feet long, 13 feet wide, weighs 30 tons, and has cast and wrought-iron members., (Captions):, Wendell Bollman (1814-1884) , Courtesy of the B&O Railroad Museum, The Bollman Bridge carrying a farm road near Meyersdale, spanning CSX tracks. One of his simpler bridge designs. , Courtesy of Paul g. Wiegman, Typical construction drawing for a Bollman Bridge. Right - Iron pillar of the Bollman Bridge in Savage, Maryland. , Courtesy of the Library of Congress, Lifting the bridge for installation on The Great Allegheny Passage., These iron bridges were easy to erect by unskilled laborers, since each part had numbers cast into it for easy identification, and the bridges could be test assembled in the B&O shops. Iron diagonals radiated down from central or end towers, and everything was held together with bolts, mortise-and-tenon joints and wrought-iron pins. , Courtesy of Historic American Buildings Survey/Historic American Engineering Record