Chapter Notes: Pacific (Destination Unknown) · 12:11am Mar 25th, 2022
It’s fifteen miles from Rennie Island to the Pacific as the pegasus flies. Even for a pegasus who prefers hopping trains to flying, that’s not far. Sweetsong’s journey is nearly at an end.
Special thanks to AlwaysDressesInStyle, penguincascadia, and TomRedlion for pre-reading and regional assistance!
I don’t know if I ever mentioned the different types of drawbridges, even though Sweetsong has seen all of them on her trip. There are three main categories (and a few weird outliers). It’s also important to know that as long as the bridge can move, it counts as a drawbridge, even if it doesn’t rise at all.
The ones that most of us are probably most familiar with are bascule bridges. They’re hinged on one end, and open on the other, such as a traditional castle drawbridge. Depending on what it’s crossing, there might be two spans that each lift and meet in the middle; you’ll often see those used on roads. Railroads often use these, typically with a through-truss design and a big counterweight on the hinge end.
Vertical lift bridges go straight up on a pair of towers. Possibly the most famous of those in the US is the Duluth Harbor bridge. They are also typically a through-truss design.
Finally, swinging bridges are typically balanced in the center and pivot out of the way. Those were simpler for railroads to construct (since they were essentially turntables, which railroads were quite familiar with building); however, they need a support in the center of the channel. Many of them have been replaced with more modern bridges, typically bascule bridges.
[There are other specialty types as well; technically, a jet bridge is a drawbridge.]
While sometimes it’s more cost-effective to replace a road drawbridge with a new bridge that is high enough to clear whatever traffic might go underneath (usually ships), the same can’t be said for railroad drawbridges. Trains really don’t like going up and down grades, and if you wanted to build a bridge high enough to clear a shipping channel, you’d need miles of approach and departure track to get back down to grade level. For example, the McArthur Bridge in St. Louis is 108 feet above the Mississippi, and has over two miles of approach from the Illinois side.
The abandoned site that Sweetsong saw near the swing bridge was Harbor Paper, and in Google Street View (2012), it’s still there.
She’s not the first pegasus to encounter a concrete lot where there used to be a paper mill; Silver Glow found one in Kalamazoo as well, one that had always been there, and I was as surprised as anyone when I was checking things on satellite view and it was gone.
Runways are marked by compass headings, rounded to the nearest ten and then the last digit is dropped. So, for example, a runway on a heading of 242 degrees would be runway 24; the reciprocal heading is eighteen less (180 degrees).
I know some of y’all say that you learn things from my blogs; I learned something while I was writing this chapter. I’d always assumed (wrongly, as is apparent if you take a moment to think about it) that the two runway numbers would add up to 36, and spent a long time studying the satellite map to see if I was misunderstanding the numbers on the runway (24/6). While you can’t have a runway zero (it would be 36 instead), you could have 36/18 or you could also have 19/10, and clearly neither of those add up to thirty six.
In fact, you might remember a few blogs back when I mentioned the runway numbers at Boeing field changing due to compass drift, and I think I said what the numbers were . . . 14/32. You’d think I would have noticed then.
Source
I couldn’t find a pic of a runway with numbers, so have this.
Since we’re talking about airports and runways, there are standard approaches. Now, most big airports have their own approach and departure plates which can be quite complex, but we’re not going to worry about those. Instead, we’re just imagining a traditional runway surrounded by flat fields. The typical approach to this runway would be to fly parallel on one side of it, then when clear of the departure end, turn towards the runway; that’s the crosswind leg. The next turn, which parallels the runway on the other side, puts the airplane on the downwind leg, then the base turn, and then line up for the runway for the final approach.
The idea behind flying this pattern is that it’s predictable, and any pilots (or pegasi) in the area can see what an airplane’s intentions are even if they can’t radio each other or a control tower. It also gives the pilot who’s intending to land a good view of the entire runway.
I’ve heard that there’s a story on FimFiction about a pegasus flying east.
Sweetsong’s going the other way, and I know that it must have occurred to at least one reader to wonder if she were to continue flying west over the Pacific, what land would she encounter next?
By basic eyeballing and the distance-measuring tool on Google Maps, if she holds her approximate course to the harbor, she’d hit Unalaska Island in about 1900 miles (3057 km); if she kept going, she’d cross the tip of Kiska Island next (2580 miles/4150 km), and then the next land would be Japan, right about in the town of Yosukura (or that might be a train station in Iwaki, I’m not entirely sure). That’s 4620 miles, or about 7440 km.
Not only can you get a peach and burrata pizza at the Oyhut Bay Grill and Loft, but you can also get a peach and burrata salad.
I’ll be honest, putting peaches on a pizza is even less intuitive than spam and mangos, and yet there are plenty of recipes that come up for peach and burrata pizza, such as this one.
This week’s song is ‘The Train Song’ by Nick Cave. I enjoy Nick Cave, although I wasn’t familiar with this song.
Interestingly, and appropriately enough, The Train Song was the B-side of a single. The A-side of that single is called The Ship Song.
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My favourite place for rail bridges in the UK has to be Keadby and Althorpe close to Scunthorpe where thee railway crosses first a canal, using a totally unique low level Sideways sliding drawbridge, followed by the climb up to clear the tidal River Trent at the barge docks using a Bascule bridge. Unfortunately that hasnt been moved in many years. Although the sliding bridge also has the distinction of being solar powered via a trickle charge, despite being a heavy dual track mainline capacity next to what was once a major coal fired power station.
Sometimes you see a double thick or greater bridge and wonder just what they were thinking.
Then you see on the old historical news them moving several hundred tons of machinery.
The Austraeoh has been summoned!!
In all seriousness I had no clue verticle lift bridges were so rare. I've only ever seen them. There's one in Hamilton, Ontario and several over the Welland Canal
As a lifelong Minnesotan, I feel the need to point out that the Duluth lift bridge never carried train traffic. When it was originally built, it had a suspended car underneath that would travel from one side to the other, but was later converted to the lift bridge it is today. I can see the appeal of this kind of bridge when it comes to railroads, but unfortunately, trains never crossed this one. Loving this story.
I had to look up what a peach and burrata pizza was, and then when I found the recipe, it called for one burrata, sliced, and I had to go look it up on its own. It's not often I'm presented with a word I've never seen before, and especially not a food. I think the last one was cioppino, and that had to be a decade ago.
Thank you for writing!
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That is an insane design, I wonder why they went with that instead of something more conventional?
5646120
They’re not that rare, at least for railroads. And a lot of them are really old (as is much other railroad infrastructure). AFAIK they were never that popular for auto/pedestrian bridges, when there were simpler solutions available.
5646122
Huh, I always just assumed it was a rail bridge.
So almost like a gondola system? I vaguely remember hearing of that kind of bridge before, I think Tom Scott did an episode on one somewhere in the UK.
Thank you!
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I’d never heard of a burrata before, either. I can’t recall ever seeing it in a cheese aisle; maybe I need to find more upscale cheesemongers.
Re: Nick Cave
Train Long Suffering!