Took this video, about 11 minutes long, on Saturday evening. Sirens go off, bridge closes, and freight pulled by 5 locomotives rumbles through. Love the sound of it getting faster and faster. Taken from the dock at the end of my neighborhood. [video=youtube;9V13IlCzlfo]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9V13IlCzlfo[/video]
Is the bridge manned or automated? Does it generally remain in an open position between trains? What kind of maritime traffic passes through? Were the two switchers actually part of the train power, or just in transit?
Actually it is manned all the time. That room you see on the side is the control room. It is generally in the open position, though there is a good deal of traffic over it so it closes a lot. The only real water traffic on this stretch of the river is pleasure boats. In the way-way back days this was the route that the the rice took from the plantations down into Charleston for processing. All of those plantations are tourist spots now, so no business traffic. Later on there was a bit of logging, but not much. There has been a bridge over the Ashley River in this spot since well before the Civil War. It was originally part of local line, then the Plant System eventually on to SCL and now CSX. It is also the main line for Amtrak south to Savannah from Charleston. As for the two switchers, I have no idea. I was fairly surprised to see them in there. No idea if they were in use or just being moved further down the line.
Yes, they do. This is a double track area that leads to the freight yards on the north end and then changes to one track not too far south of the bridge. So, the is often a passing area and they stop on the bridge quite frequently. Here is the area on Google Maps - https://www.google.com/maps/@32.8472272,-80.049698,255m/data=!3m1!1e3
Here is a link to some pictures I put on Google+ of the Amtrak Autotrain going over the same bridge. https://plus.google.com/111586244029690756195/posts/6uKLECRmcJU Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk
