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In our final installment of this "tale of five bridges", we visit a bridge which is a road bridge BUT involves the use of rails and once again the innovative folks at Western Mechanical.
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As a young teenager I watched as they built the original four lane Dundas Highway #5 bridge over the deep gorge above 16 Mile Creek just west of what is now Neyagawa Boulevard in Oakville. I recall the thrill riding in a World War II Snorkel equipped bulldozer through the pools in the creek below with the construction company owner's son at the controls.
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The challenge with the new bridge was to minimize the disruption of traffic as the next nearest bridges were a significant distance away. So they built the concrete piers with steel beams sticking out their south side. They then bolted steel beams with rail on top of them to the south end of these piers as shown in the rightmost picture above. On the original bridge, they borrowed a bit of the south side of the roadway for a surface on which to lay the second track as shown in the middle photograph.
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Now they could deliver the concrete beams to the jobsite and simply place them on the ground as shown in the picture at the left above. Then Western Mechanical again used a “linear crane” as shown to lift the beams one at a time and move them into place without any disruption to traffic.
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By Russ Milland, TRHA