Back in the day, the Reading had cast iron bridge number signs, with the number expressed as a fraction based on the milepost. For example, a bridge at milepost 200.58 would be identified as:
200
58
...on the sign.
But I never actually saw any such bridge number signs. If the bridge was marked as all, the fractional number was painted somewhere on each end of the bridge - black numbers on a white background. The PRR marked their bridges the same way.
From the 1920s through the 1950s, RDG would cast the year of the bridge's construction in one of the abutment walls as shown in the attached photo. When I was there in the '70s, the steel forms and changeable digits for forming these date stamps were still stored in the blueprint room on the 13th Floor of Reading Terminal. I probably could have saved a sample after ConRail took over but alas didn't think of it at the time. Plus, the diamond-shaped plaque, being about two feet by 18 inches, might have been just a bit too heavy to carry home on the Crestmont Express....
/s/ Larry
Lawrence G. Lovejoy, P.E.
| Attachments: |
|
RDG1927jpg.jpg [ 72.12 KiB | Viewed 6152 times ] |