Tell Tales and Tall Tales from the River Street Bridge

A most rewarding aspect of modelling something so local as the Hanley Spur is that it's so darned personal. Not necessarily personal to me, but rather to those who lived near it and remember it best. To find someone who remembered more macro modelling might be easy, but to find accounts of micro modelling of such a specific area of a smallish city? Priceless. From my files, these photos and articles speak volumes about what this structure meant to local residents.

From the May-June 2007 Kingston Rail, a 1982 photo of the bridge - a pedestrian pathway at the time, with the CP right-of-way looking flooded and poorly-drained. And some hard evidence of how the bridge was rebuilt for a specific purpose (top photo - as always, click to enlarge). Don McQueen kindly shared two photos of the bridge in December, 1982. Looking south:

 And looking north - colour version of top photo. CP's drainage left something to be desired:

Book photo, three years earlier:

A undated view downtown from atop the bridge, kindly shared by Marc Shaw:

The Whig was upset that CN planned to have the bridge rebuilt in January, 1970. Only problem was that CN failed to secure 'stopping up' of River Street prior to the work being done and the bridge deck removed! The foundation was rebuilt and a new bridge deck installed. The usual city process was not followed. Scandalous! January 24, 1970, deckless:

Another misfortune befell a GTR Conductor who was atop some moving cars and struck by the bridge ( above) after spotting two cars at the Baylie [sic] siding.

Patrick Kennedy's column appeared in the Kingston Whig-Standard on November 23, 1995, about two years after the bridge broke the back (and vice-versa) of a transport truck. The article even hints at the reason Orchard Street, just to the east, got its name!

Controversy over the bridge's reputation as a viable transportation route lived on Without the presence of CN and CP tracks, it's hard to imagine why this bridge was needed. But in its day, even irregular trains could cause crossing consternation for nearby road traffic. In this October 18, 2003 letter to the Whig editor:

Appearing in the Whig on August 23, 2001, this is very personal! Vince wrote a letter to the editor afterwards, thanking the paper for printing his little stories. Interesting that this one mentions stories read by a survivor semaphore-tender.

That famous transport truck! Taking a wrong turn, this behemoth ended up on the little bridge on March 9,1993: 

The bridge was closed to pedestrians on November 10, 1994, as described in the Whig clipping below. It was being dismantled in 2003, hence this letter to the editor on October 14 of that year: 

So we can talk all day about nut-bolt-washer castings, how to weather timbers prototypically, and decalling boxcars specific to an era. If we can only zoom in on the micro from the macro, to understand how real people perceived and lived around this bridge, it can only enrich our modelling experience! I know it has mine. The City of Kingston erected this information panel near the site of the River Street bridge - photographed in August, 2019: