{"id":37324,"date":"2022-11-11T20:58:41","date_gmt":"2022-11-12T03:58:41","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/durango-silverton-narrow-gauge-railroad-replacing-old-bridge-south-of-silverton\/"},"modified":"2026-03-31T02:37:01","modified_gmt":"2026-03-31T08:37:01","slug":"durango-silverton-narrow-gauge-railroad-replacing-old-bridge-south-of-silverton","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/durango-silverton-narrow-gauge-railroad-replacing-old-bridge-south-of-silverton\/","title":{"rendered":"Durango & Silverton Narrow Gauge Railroad replacing old bridge south of Silverton"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

\"The
The Durango Silverton Narrow Gauge Railroad will begin construction on a new bridge south of Silverton in spring 2023. (Courtesy of Luke Prince, file)<\/span>du1-i-syn<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>

The Durango & Silverton Narrow Gauge Railroad will be replacing an old bridge this summer south of Silverton. The worn and weathered structure sits 2 miles south of Silverton at the mouth of the canyon where the Animas River exits into the Silverton Caldera.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe actual construction process should be pretty quick,\u201d said Matthew Cunningham, operations and special projects manager of the D&SNG. \u201cWe\u2019ve gone with a prefabricated design. The construction period should be anywhere from two to four months.\u201d<\/p>\n

The actual age of the old bridge is not known, though there is speculation that it was first constructed in the 1910s. Cunningham, however, thinks he knows when it was last reconstructed.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe Rio Grande didn\u2019t keep the best records or it has gotten lost over time,\u201d he said, \u201cbut from what I\u2019ve found \u2013 there\u2019s some old pictures \u2013 and it looks like it last had some major work done on it back in 1932.\u201d<\/p>\n

Though there has been no major overhaul of the 242-foot bridge in nearly a century, Cunningham says it has been maintained throughout the years. Now that the D&SNG has the funds, however, it will move forward with replacing the bridge in its entirety.<\/p>\n

The estimated cost of the bridge\u2019s construction will be just north of $2 million, Cunningham said. Some of the funds will be taken from a grant the D&SNG received in 2020 from the Consolidated Rail Infrastructure and Safety Improvements program through the U.S. Department of Transportation.<\/p>\n

The new bridge will be built adjacent to the old one, so the train can still make its scheduled runs to Silverton throughout the spring and summer months while the new bridge is being built.<\/p>\n

\u201cI talked to the Silverton Standard<\/em> last week,\u201d Cunningham said, \u201cjust to let them know there won\u2019t be interruptions to the train schedule. I didn\u2019t want anyone up there to go, \u2018Wait a minute!\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

The new bridge will maintain the same design as the old one with its open deck look but will have driven steel piling, concrete pier caps and steel I-beam stringers, instead of the wooden structure of the old bridge, which will make it more resilient to flooding.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re generally trying to keep the look and feel of the old bridge with the new one,\u201d Cunningham said.<\/p>\n

Once construction on the new bridge is completed, the old bridge will be removed, along with the check dam beneath it, which has been reducing the Animas River\u2019s water flow for nearly one hundred years.<\/p>\n

\u201cRemoving the check dam will have a more positive impact on the river,\u201d Cunningham said. \u201cThere will be less obstruction, and the river will return to a more natural flow than before there was a bridge there.\u201d<\/p>\n

Cunningham has been working on the new bridge project for D&SNG for the past four years and is eager to finally get started on its construction.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s been a long road, and we\u2019re excited to really get into it next summer and do it,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

molsen@durangoherald.com<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Construction on a more fortified design will begin in summer 2023<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":37325,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[459,170,28,1686,1562,327],"naviga_topic":[],"class_list":["post-37324","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","tag-construction-and-property","tag-durango-and-silverton-narrow-gauge-railroad-co","tag-headlines","tag-heavy-construction","tag-san-juan-county-colorado","tag-silverton"],"acf":[],"author_name":"dh_admin","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37324","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=37324"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37324\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":83632,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37324\/revisions\/83632"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/37325"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=37324"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=37324"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=37324"},{"taxonomy":"naviga_topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/naviga_topic?post=37324"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}