Rockville Bridge

Rockville Bridge from above. (Photo by Tom Hollyman.)

How do I photographically depict one of the greatest engineering triumphs of all time, mighty Rockville Bridge slung across the Susquehanna (“suss-kwee-HA-nuh;” as in “and”) River north of Harrisburg, PA, by the Pennsylvania Railroad (“Pennsy”) about the turn of the 20th century?


A “Dek” (Decapod 2-10-0) heads west toward Enola yard in 1955. (Photo by Don Wood.)


A freight led by a U-boat heads east across the bridge, and will cross over to head north toward Sunbury in 1963. (Photo by Bob Malinoski.)

Forty-eight 70-foot stone arches march majestically across the river, 3,820 feet long, almost three-quarters of a mile.
It’s like Horseshoe Curve. No camera can do it justice. You have to see it yourself.
A camera always produces a rectangular image. It can only depict a small portion of the bridge, and at the same time focus on that portion.
Your eye will do what no camera can do, focus on what’s in front of you, then follow the bridge across the river — way too long for a camera-image.
This is like Horseshoe Curve. Your eye first focuses on the north calk, then follows the track around to the south calk, which is visibly higher than the north calk.
There’s no way a camera can depict how the railroad is pinned to the mountainsides. You have to see that yourself.

(Photo by Dan Cupper [the book’s author].)

A memorial sign says Rockville Bridge is the longest stone-masonry bridge in the world.
Not exactly.
What you see is stone-masonry, but inside is concrete.
I used to say “only a direct hit from a thermonuclear warhead could take Rockville out,” but it’s fragile.
Rockville has endured floods, but a portion did wash out a few years ago.
There are other bridges as impressive as Rockville.
Even more impressive is mighty Tunkhannock Viaduct (“Tunk-HA-nuck;” as in “and”) near Scranton built by Delaware, Lackawanna & Western Railroad. It opened in 1915.


A long freight crosses Tunkhannock Viaduct. (Canadian Pacific operates the railroad.) (Photo by Michael Sullivan.)

It’s reinforced concrete. When Rockville was built, reinforced concrete was still a technical challenge.
Every time I see Tunkhannock I say “this was built with private money.” —Would public money take on such a challenge?
Tunkhannock leaps the entire Tunkhannock defile, what used to require a railroad-grade down into the valley, and then back up out.
Another famous railroad-bridge is Starrucca Viaduct (“stuh-ROO-kuh;” as in “rule”) in northeastern PA.


Starrucca Viaduct.

Starrucca was built by Erie Railroad, which was supposed to be all in New York, but took this short diversion into PA to ease grading.
I’ve seen both Starrucca and Tunkhannock, and Starrucca is not that impressive. But it was built in 1848. It’s all stone, and still in use.
The last time I visited Allegheny Crossing a few weeks ago I bought a book about Rockville Bridge.
The Susquehanna was one of two barriers to trade across PA in the early 1800s.
The other barrier is Allegheny Mountain; the Susquehanna was easier.
The Susquehanna is not navigable, it’s too shallow. Canals were built next to it, but they couldn’t accommodate ocean-going ships.
Railroads were the coming thing in the early 1800s; there was a state-sponsored railroad from Philadelphia to the Susquehanna.
So how does a railroad get across the Susquehanna to promote Pittsburgh-to-Philadelphia trade?
The current Rockville Bridge is bridge number-three. First was a long wooden bridge built about 1847 when Pennsy first built.
The stone footings for this bridge are still visible in the riverbed.
That bridge was only single-track, and quickly became a bottleneck.
I think I earlier reported it as double-track.
The wooden bridge was replaced by a double-track iron truss in 1877. Even that bridge became a bottleneck.
The current bridge was built four tracks wide, but has since been reduced to two and three.

A Conrail welded-rail train negotiates the bridge. (Photo by Jim Bradley.)

It’s still four tracks in many of the pictures posted herein.
I’ve been across Rockville, an around-PA railfan excursion my wife and I took a few years ago, out of Altoona.
We took the old Pennsy Bald Eagle branch north to Lock Haven. That railroad is now the Nittany & Bald Eagle short-line.
In Lock Haven we joined the Norfolk Southern Buffalo/Erie line, then came back down the eastern shore of the Susquehanna to Rockville.
There we got on the original Pennsy main, which used Rockville Bridge.
It was dusk, yet here we were, gliding placidly over the wide Susquehanna below.
It was surreal, just getting across takes a few minutes.
Every railfan should see Rockville; it’s impressive.
A train on it is tiny. Often an entire train will fit on the bridge, perhaps as many as 80 cars.
Rockville is still in use. In fact, it was considered as a base for the Interstate-81 bridge over the Susquehanna.
That didn’t happen. Interstate-81 built its own bridge south of Rockville.
Rockville is no longer the mainline across PA. Freight goes down to Enola (“aye-NOLE-uh;” as in “hay”) Yard southwest of Harrisburg, where it heads toward New York City via the old Reading (“redd-ing;” not “read-ing”) line, after the old Pennsy electrified-line became Amtrak’s Northeast Corridor.
Even Pennsy degraded Rockville Bridge. Rockville was part of the original Pennsy main, Harrisburg to Pittsburgh.
But Harrisburg became a bottleneck, so much Pennsy built Enola southwest of Harrisburg across the river.
So much freight was moving east over Pennsy, they began routing it to Enola, where it could switch over to Pennsy’s electrified freight-lines east.
But passenger service continued over the original Pennsy through Harrisburg, then over Rockville.
But passenger service became moribund.
So Rockville is now more just a river-crossing for freight from Enola bound for the eastern shore of the river, then north.
That’s not the original Pennsy main, and of course the railroad is no longer Pennsy. It’s Norfolk Southern, a successor to Conrail.
Yet Rockville remains.
Every time I see it I think “It would take a direct-hit from a thermonuclear warhead to take it out!”


(Photo by Rodney DiPaolo.)

• I am a railfan, and have been since age-two (I’m 70).
• A “U-boat” is General-Electric’s “U” (utility) series freight locomotive. Railfans called ‘em “U-boats.”
• My beloved wife of over 44 years died of cancer April 17th, 2012. I miss her dearly.