Weymouth Swing Span

[Bill Linley]

Was wondering if anyone knows how the swing was operated, by electric motor, steam, or hand crank. One of the old timers in Weymouth told Doug Lawson that as a kid, the bridge tender would charge them 5 cents to crank the bridge around. I'm wondering where the bridge tender was located to operate the span, on the span or elsewhere??? Also was the bridge normally open for boat traffic or closed for rail traffic ??? It certainly was a feat of navigation and seamanship to sail the masted boats through the narrow channels under the bridge. The Oct 1965 timetable shows it as a non-interlocked swing bridge.

[Paul Charland]

Hi Bill,

I can answer the easy part, the bridge would normally be in the closed position for use by the railway and only opened for boat traffic when there was a boat there that needed it to be opened.

I've looked a the few photos that are out there from the 30s and can't see anything that appears to be a location for any controls, crank, electric or but pretty sure it would not have been steam as there is no source nearby. My guess is electric and operated from the station but in earlier years might have been manual.

There is a photo from 1931 of a schooner at the wharf so they were still using it at least back then and the bridge was much different then with the approaches on either side of the swing bright section being more of a trestle then the plate girder spans that it was in later years.

These are from the Nova Scotia archives:





Paul

[Bill Linley]

Thanks, Paul. Interesting photos; wonder what else will show up? Bill

[downeastrailfan]

Hi Bill,

Unfortunately, I can't answer your questions. Have you tried contacting Sissiboo Landing? https://www.weymouthnovascotia.com/comm ... oo-landing

[Dan Conlin]

The swing bridge would have been hand operated with the bridge tender turning a crank inserted in the centre of the swing span. With careful balancing, good bearings and mechanical advantage of gearing, a large span could be moved with surprisingly little force. Some swing bridges on busy water ways got electric motors to speed things up but the DAR swings only were opened occaisionally as large sailing ships dwindled rapidly after the 1890s.
The Trains magazine forum has a good discussion on this topic: http://cs.trains.com/trn/f/111/p/179752/2071326.aspx

Dan

[stem]

I always liked the post card showing the Clementsport bridge swung open with the ship passing through. It's on our wiki:
http://www.dardpi.ca/wiki/index.php?tit ... ridgea.jpg

The manual crank seems the only practical explanation. Funny how things like that get lost or forgotten after many years. We should make mention of that on the swing bridge wiki pages. Wouldn't it be a dream to recover some of those old engineering drawings or even find out who supplied the bridges?

Videos of hand operated swing bridges
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iOYGkCpByEg
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GrspAPjQZmk