Railroad bridges, Hooksett, NH

Baltimore truss railroad bridge

I wasn't going to write this picture up. There's nothing particularly historical about this bridge. I didn't even know this bridge existed.

I'm on vacation, and I'd made a promise to visit my parents graves in Concord, New Hampshire, at some point during my week off. My dad would never, ever pay a toll if he could avoid it, and particularly on I-93 between Manchester and Concord. He'd always take the back road, Route 3A, through Hooksett and Bow and into Concord, where we lived.

That's how we kids were brought up. So I was toodling along on 3A, which follows the Merrimack River, just casually looking over now and again because it's a beautiful river and it was my river growing up. Through the trees, I saw an old iron railroad bridge and figured I'd better stop by.

I didn't recognize the truss design; I looked it up when I got home and saw it was a "Baltimore truss". The railroad bridges here in Connecticut all seem to be Pratt truss, so that was new.

This closed-off railroad bridge crosses the Merrimack nearly parallel to the Baltimore truss bridge. This one appears to be a three span Pratt truss bridge with extra bracing. Or it could be a Warren truss. I don't know. The cool thing is that these bridges, right next to each other, were made using entirely different designs.

Lots of people seem to have photographed these bridges (add me to that list) and/or jumped from them, but I'm not able to find any information about them online.

Just... back roads New Hampshire, I guess.

Notre Dame Bridge, Manchester, NH

When I was a kid, our family lived in Linwood, Massachusetts, but all our grandparents were in Concord, New Hampshire, where both my parents had been raised. The long, two and a half hour ride in one of Dad's huge, boat-like cars was marked by three landmarks: Whalom Park, an amusement park I never had a chance to see before it closed; the diner on the Massachusetts/New Hampshire border that served french fries in a paper boat; and the huge arch of the Notre Dame Bridge in Manchester, New Hampshire.

Seeing that bridge meant we were almost to grammy's. Grammy Holloway drove me over it once in her old beige VW Beetle (though I guess it wasn't old then). It was -- incredible. I was living in California when they tore it down and replaced it with an utterly non-descript bridge. I found some video on YouTube of the bridge's last moments.