Curved Bridges

There was an interesting thread on the Toy Trains Mailing List in which a few of the participants questioned the prototypical existence of curved railroad bridges.

Here at trainMinder, we’re both curious and helpful. We did a little research on the Internet and came up with quite a few examples of curved railroad bridges. Please enjoy

The first example is of the Northern Pacific Railroad, circa 1918.

If you think the photo above is an optical illusion or the rails are actually straight,
please take a look at the next example is from Utah.

This example was taken in Oregon in the late 1940’s.

The United States doesn’t have a monopoly on curved bridges. The example below is from Sierra Leone, Africa.

This colorful example
comes from India.

The photograph was taken in 2000.

Anyone who guessed Switzerland on this one was right!

And, finally, our favorite of them all, is this picture taken in China in early 2004.
The picture shows two double-headed 2-10-2’s struggling up a curved incline.

A curved railroad bridge on an upward grade? As they used to say in that wonderful feature in Model Railroader magazine, “It just ain’t prototype!”