Railroad
The railroad track that runs across the bridge was originally part of the Boston & Maine Railroad, and connected to South Berwick via an easement that is now Rt. 236. The bridge replaced a railroad trestle that was located just upriver. The trestle collapsed on September 10, 1939, sending the engine (B&M #3666) and baggage car to the bottom of the river, where they remain. It had been weakened when a caisson used in the construction of the new bridge dragged its anchor cables, which pulled out several of the trestle's bents.
Currently, the tracks lead only to the Portsmouth Naval Shipyard in Kittery, and are used for the transportation of nuclear materials.
Read more about this topic: Sarah Mildred Long Bridge
Famous quotes containing the word railroad:
“People who make puns are like wanton boys that put coppers on the railroad tracks. They amuse themselves and other children, but their little trick may upset a freight train of conversation for the sake of a battered witticism.”
—Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (1809–1894)
“Though the railroad and the telegraph have been established on the shores of Maine, the Indian still looks out from her interior mountains over all these to the sea.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“... no other railroad station in the world manages so mysteriously to cloak with compassion the anguish of departure and the dubious ecstasies of return and arrival. Any waiting room in the world is filled with all this, and I have sat in many of them and accepted it, and I know from deliberate acquaintance that the whole human experience is more bearable at the Gare de Lyon in Paris than anywhere else.”
—M.F.K. Fisher (1908–1992)