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Ed - I'm sure you know that we in Chicago have more movable span bridges than any other city in the world. (For you out of towners, there's one everyblock to the north and west of downtown and that's just for starters.) I think every one has unique bridge houses, many very interesting. I have an Atlas gate tower kit waiting to be converted to a bridge house, and my bridge doesn't even open! I can't justify a need for it, but it will look cool.
are all the towers still manned or controled by computer?
We have a large bascule bridge here in NJ in my home town. Has no opened up the state claims in like 30 years or more. I remember seeing it up as a kid 20 years ago or so. It has 4 towers, 2 on each side. I've always wanted to go in them and walk around down to the bottom and then cross over to the tower on the other side.
Hey guys this is ur friend chef mike baruch, author of street food chicago. I have an uncle who works on the bridges. Chicago has 10 different designs, the main river has exeactly ten bridges. To answer your question none of them are animated yet. Through the years their have been a couple of small aciddents, so someone is usually there to raise and lower the bridge. Thats a cool picture. If you ever wanna buy a really cool poster contact a store in Chicago and San Francisco called The Architecture Store, the poster is called chicago bascule bridges main branch chicago river. Its a colored poster, that shows all the bridges with a shitload of information on each.
I just thought that pic was cool. Just the idea of that tower all covered with green, the varying materials, the water, the walls, the pilings, the metal .. would be sweet on a layout
Mike - enjoyed your book, didn't know you were a member here. I know a guy that works on the bridges too. The way I understand it they group the boats together downtown so they can let a bunch go at one time, limiting the openings and disruption of street traffic. Than two crews hop scotch from one bridge to next to open and close them. We had a cab crushed by one a number of years ago so one's big on automating these massive moving bodies.
Oh, and just to make things more interesting two of the downtown bridges have El tracks on the upper level. Those would be cool to model.
