I am a volunteer with the Lake Champlain Maritime Museum (LCMM) which has been mapping the bottom of Lake Champlain to locate sunken Revolutionary War ships and other artifacts. TheLCMM has located the remains of floating drawbridges across Lake Champlain. These drawbridges consisted of trestles built out from each shore with a 300 foot gap between the ends of the trestles to provide a passageway for commercial lake boats which was filled by barge-like 'drawboats' with railroad tracks along their topsides. My project is to try to determine how the tracks on the drawboats were aligned horizontally and vertically with the tracks on the trestles given the variations in lake level and loads on the drawboats. I imagine the problems of alignment were very similar to those with railroad car ferries across rivers and/or harbors. Casn anyone give me an idea as to how these alignment problems were solved?

fhmiel@nycap.com

I am a Curator at a meritime museum in San Francisco that uses an old ferry pier. The change in tide level and load lever is taken care of by a structure called a "bridge" They could be used by either freight or passenger ferries. Basicly a section of the pier has a hinge on the inshore end which allows it to be raised and lowered as necessary.

New York has the famous Staten Island ferry, but there must be some ferry bridges nearer than that to you in Vermont. I thinlk that there may still be some passenger ferries in Montreal for crossing the St Lawrence.

Good Luck with your search! TM

Amiles1060@aol.com