With all the news of the Kinzua bridge, I don't recall ever seeing any old photos of the bridge in use, before it was abandoned. Anyone have any?

ryarger@rypn.org

The first true railfan photographer I ever met (as a kid) was an ex-Erie brakeman by the name of Rex Henderson. He worked between Salamanca and Brockway between WWII and the abandonment of the bridge in 1959.

According to Rex (now long departed), the favorite trick of the resident crews was to spot 'something wrong' up ahead of the caboose, and have to send a rookie brakeman up to check a sticking handbrake on a car - which meant a roofwalk journey up the train. This was always carefully timed so that the rookie was on the cartops when the train hit the viaduct - putting a greenhorn 320 feet over the ground on a moving train. The crews would watch from the caboose cupola and laugh as the greenhorns 'hit the deck' and clung onto the roofwalks for dear life. And if at night, or in a snowstorm, so much the better. Rex had had it done to him, too, and never forgot it.



randygustafson@stoneconsulting.com