Northern Pacific-BNSF Minneapolis Rail Bridge is a combination plate girder bridge and truss bridge that spans the Mississippi River in Minneapolis, Minnesota.
It was built in 1884 by the Northern Pacific Railway. The bridge was originally built in 1884 with five through-trusses. In 1927, it was renovated with nine plate-girder spans. In 1963, to provide upstream river navigation, two girder spans and three regular piers were removed to make room for a Warren truss span over the main channel, set on two heavier piers. This work took almost two years.
The bridge was originally built to provide access to Northern Pacific's yards just north of downtown Minneapolis. Today, the yards are mostly gone, but there are still some industrial areas serviced by rail on the west bank of the Mississippi.
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Famous quotes containing the words northern, rail and/or bridge:
“The note of the white-throated sparrow, a very inspiriting but almost wiry sound, was first heard in the morning, and with this all the woods rang. This was the prevailing bird in the northern part of Maine. The forest generally was alive with them at this season, and they were proportionally numerous and musical about Bangor. They evidently breed in that State.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“Old man, it’s four flights up and for what?
Your room is hardly any bigger than your bed.
Puffing as you climb, you are a brown woodcut
stooped over the thin rail and the wornout tread.”
—Anne Sexton (1928–1974)
“What need the bridge much broader than the flood?”
—William Shakespeare (1564–1616)