Building Bridges

Last night the girls and I went to watch a new bridge being installed near our house in Ottawa. They are widening the highway and had removed the original bridge a few months ago so that they could move the bridge foundations back to make space for more highway. They built the new bridge alongside the highway and last night they moved it into place. It was the largest, heaviest bridge replacement of its kind in North America.

The work was done overnight so we got there around 8:00pm to catch the show.

We arrived and there was all kinds of activity in anticipation of the bridge being moved. There were trucks pouring loads and loads of gravel on to the highway which had been completely closed for a couple of hours at that point. There were graders levelling out the gravel and rollers flattening it out.

There were dozens of heavy machines moving around the site. We watched for about an hour and took some time out to be interviewed by one of the local news crews there to cover the story. I don’t know if we made the cut because I can’t view the newsfeed since it is password protected against people like us who don’t subscribe to any TV providers.

Shortly after 9:00pm the girls were ready to go home and to bed and they hadn’t yet started the move, so I took them home to bed and came back myself to take pictures and some videos for them so they could see the move they had waited for. Plus, I got to watch a pretty fascinating project. It isn’t every day that you get to see a bridge driving around. Laura and I actually lived beside this piece of highway in our first apartment after getting married.

I’ve included some of the photos below.

This post also serves as a bit of a bridge itself. I am relocating the blog from http://www.dadgoesround.wordpress.com to www.dadgoesround.com. It is still a work in progress, but I activated it this weekend and I am hopeful that I can transfer all my loyal followers over to the new site without any work required on your part. Feel free to check out the new site and sign yourself up directly. You can also follow my relatively new facebook page for the blog at www.facebook.com/DadGoesRound. I welcome your feedback on the new site. I am figuring it out as I go and it is the first site I have done myself, so I am open to any suggestions. For the next little while I will be posting an intro to any new posts on the old site and a link to the full post on the new site so you can find me if the follower transfer doesn’t work out.

So as promised, here is a bridge on wheels.

This was 20 minutes or so after they started the move.

The bridge was moved on four of these large movers. One at each end and two in the middle.

Preparing for the first pivot.

I moved to the other side of the approach foundation to get another point of view.

Lots of adjusting at this point to get it lined up properly.

In the final stages. At this point the bridge was moving at a barely perceptible speed.

The last few feet of the move at my end.

Closing the gap.

Two hours after the move started, everything was in position.

I didn’t stay for the lowering on to the foundations. I was tired when the whole thing started and my enthusiasm was diminishing and fatigue increasing quickly once the move was done.

Have you ever taken your kids to watch big construction projects?

Come and check out my new site and let me know what you think.