Two great pieces of news from the Northwest Railway Museum were reported in this week's Snoqualmie Valley Record: restoration of the 1891-built bridge 35 began and that Snoqualmie City Council upheld the permits approving the Museum's new collection care facility.

The bridge restoration will wash, paint, redeck, and replace the pile caps for this 160-foot long steel span. The bridge began life as the 7th crossing of the Yellowstone River on the Northern Pacific mainline and was moved to North Bend in 1924. Project permitting has taken nearly 3 years to approve and has prohibited the use of any creosote-treated wood products. So the new deck will be treated with lots of heavy metals like copper, zinc and arsenate and will be stained black to look like creosote. Project is funded by $351,000 of TEA-21 funding, $40,000 from the King County Cultural Development Authority and the balance from the Museum's recent successful Thomas event. Total cost? About $421,000 but we'll see when it's done...

The collection care facility has been in permitted since February 2000 and has been opposed by 2 local property owners with land about 1,500 feet from the project. They've appealed each permit approval and can probably delay the project a little longer. City council's 5-0 vote in favor of the project is indicative of the high level of local support for the project. But it only takes one 37 cent stamp to stop a million dollar project.

Richard R. Anderson
Executive Director
Northwest Railway Museum

Snoqualmie Valley Record
rra@trainmuseum.org

> Two great pieces of news from the Northwest
> Railway Museum were reported in this week's
> Snoqualmie Valley Record: restoration of the
> 1891-built bridge 35 began and that
> Snoqualmie City Council upheld the permits
> approving the Museum's new collection care
> facility.

This is good news. Just what do you mean by "collection care facility"? I was in your nice little town this past summer to see your museum. It always makes me sad to see a fine collection of engines and cars rotting down from lack of care and protection from the elements. This sounds like a step in the right direction.

johncgra@locl.net

> This is good news. Just what do you mean by
> "collection care facility"?

It's an enclosed facility for performing all types of care on nearly every type of artifact. Project opponents have argued that a "maintenance facility" is not permitted in Snoqualmie's zoning so we renamed our project a collection "conservation and restoration center", more correctly describing the functions it would be used to perform. The city agrees with our characterization. It will have about 160 track feet and over 8,000 square feet. But a couple of property owners have been opposing any structures of any size. There's more information on our web site - just click the link below.

Hopefully you were able to stop at the Snoqualmie Depot and see some of our Museum's tremendous accomplishments. Rotary 10, the Rayonier side dump car and fire car, log disconnects, kitchen car, coach 275, even the depot itself have all been restored largely by museum volunteers and without the benefit of an enclosed structure to work in. We've also made tremendous improvements on the Museums's 6 mile railway, the largest artifact in the collection. Over 3,000 ties have been replaced, 5 new signal installations completed (yah, I know what you're thinking, but the FRA inspectors are not big on antique crossing signals), 5 very busy crossings replaced with welded rail and concrete panels, bridges redecked, even one bridge replaced outright after is was lost in a land slide. And if you think working on steam locomotives is costly, I could tell you a few bridge and signal stories...

Richard R. Anderson
Executive Director
Northwest Railway Museum



http://www.trainmuseum.org
rra@trainmuseum.org

I posted this link to a slideshow of bridge 35 a few weeks ago with the subject of "pin truss bridges".

Double click on any image to start the slide show.

Bridge 35
brianf425@yahoo.com

Nice bridge. Too many of those both RR and hiway have succumbed to progress.
M. Nix

2rivers@upstel.net