FEC Strauss Trunnion Bascule Bridge | |
|---|---|
 Florida East Coast Railway bascule bridge in Jacksonville, Florida | |
| Coordinates | 30°19′21″N81°39′56″W / 30.32250°N 81.66556°W Coordinates: 30°19′21″N81°39′56″W / 30.32250°N 81.66556°W |
| Carries | 2 tracks of the Florida East Coast Railway |
| Crosses | St. Johns River |
| Locale | Jacksonville, Florida |
| Maintained by | Florida East Coast Railway |
| Characteristics | |
| Design | Simple truss bridge with bascule lift span, plate girder approaches |
| History | |
| Designer | Joseph Strauss |
| Opened | 1925 |
The FEC Strauss Trunnion Bascule Bridge is a double track railroad bridge spanning the St. Johns River in Jacksonville, Florida.
The St. Johns River is the longest river in the U.S. state of Florida and its most significant one for commercial and recreational use. At 310 miles (500 km) long, it flows north and winds through or borders twelve counties. The drop in elevation from headwaters to mouth is less than 30 feet (9 m); like most Florida waterways, the St. Johns has a very low flow rate 0.3 mph (0.13 m/s) and is often described as "lazy". Numerous lakes are formed by the river or flow into it, but as a river its widest point is nearly 3 miles (5 km) across. The narrowest point is in the headwaters, an unnavigable marsh in Indian River County. The St. Johns drainage basin of 8,840 square miles (22,900 km2) includes some of Florida's major wetlands. It is separated into three major basins and two associated watersheds for Lake George and the Ocklawaha River, all managed by the St. Johns River Water Management District.
Jacksonville is the most populous city in Florida, the most populous city in the southeastern United States and the largest city by area in the contiguous United States. It is the seat of Duval County, with which the city government consolidated in 1968. Consolidation gave Jacksonville its great size and placed most of its metropolitan population within the city limits. As of 2017 Jacksonville's population was estimated to be 892,062. The Jacksonville metropolitan area has a population of 1,523,615 and is the fourth largest in Florida.
Completed in 1925 by the Florida East Coast Railway, this structure replaced a single-track swing bridge which opened on January 5, 1890. The current structure is a simple truss bridge with plate girder approaches and a bascule lift allowing ships to pass. It is adjacent to the Acosta Bridge.
The Florida East Coast Railway is a Class II railroad operating in the U.S. state of Florida, currently owned by Grupo México.
A swing bridge is a movable bridge that has as its primary structural support a vertical locating pin and support ring, usually at or near to its center of gravity, about which the turning span can then pivot horizontally as shown in the animated illustration to the right. Small swing bridges as found over canals may be pivoted only at one end, opening as would a gate, but require substantial underground structure to support the pivot.
A truss bridge is a bridge whose load-bearing superstructure is composed of a truss, a structure of connected elements usually forming triangular units. The connected elements may be stressed from tension, compression, or sometimes both in response to dynamic loads. Truss bridges are one of the oldest types of modern bridges. The basic types of truss bridges shown in this article have simple designs which could be easily analyzed by 19th and early 20th-century engineers. A truss bridge is economical to construct because it uses materials efficiently.
