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June 1993
Steel Deck Bridge in the Doe River Gorge
This is the steel deck bridge looking at the tunnel 4, with a
steel thru truss bridge on the other side. And this is how the locals cross the
bridges in the Gorge. I once saw Dean Smith cross this bridge, but he sat
on the side girder, and inched his butt across very slowly, but he did
cross it! You can see from this angle that the stringers on this bridge
are standard gauge also. They are 5 feet apart. The amusement park that
put down the rail shifted the rails to one side, I don't know why, but my guess is so that one rail was over a stringer.
There's a funny story (there's always a funny story) to go with
this photo. These locals, two guys, a girl and a dog passed us while we were
standing and taking pictures. We were also trying to get up the courage to cross the bridge. The hikers just walked around us and crossed just like they were
walking on solid roadbed. Made some of us feel kinda wimpy. To be fair,
though, the side girder looks narrow, but it's 16 inches wide, which really
shouldn't be any trouble to cross. It's just that it's 37 feet down to
the water. Anyway, they had been swimming somewhere down
in the Gorge and were going home. When the guy carrying the orange cooler
got to the other side, he called his dog that had remained on our side. The dog hesitated, whined, started across, stumbled on some of the ties, then came back to us and refused to cross the bridge. I think you can see where this story is going, so it's continued on the next photo...
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