The Taftsville Covered Bridge Project - WGN 45-14-12

by Jim Ligon

May 31, 2013 - The reconstruction of the Taftsville Covered Bridge is coming along nicely. My guys worked right through the winter on this and they've done their usual miracles in spite of the weather. Winter ended last night with snow, by the end of the week it'll be in the 90's. The "missing" half of the bridge is back in place and the new roof extends almost all the way from River Road to the Route 4 side. We've left a small section open there for access by our stonework contractor. Bruce Payne and his crew from P&P Landscaping again earn kudos for another covered bridge stonework restoration project well done. Bruce has done a lot of stonework for us on covered bridges and I can't say enough good things about his work.

The work on the center pier is complete. We placed a concrete cap on top of the structure of stone laid up dry, added missing stone, tuck pointed the surfaces, then consolidation-grouted the pier from the bottom up, filling huge voids in the existing stone pier, drilled nine holes 35' deep from the top down into ledge rock and installed heavy steel anchor rods grouted deep into ledge rock. The rods get torqued to compress all the elements.

We began work on the east abutment to finish some exterior tuck-pointing. We'll consolidation grout it eleven feet out down the wings from the main structure, as planned. The rest stays as-is.

The west abutment will be backfilled with a combination of stone, gravel, and for earth stabilization and erosion control, gabion baskets.

We've trimmed the laminated-plank arches on the west side and reattached them to our new concrete abutment. Pier attachments will start next week with east abutment to follow. We then align the arches end to end and temporarily block them from the king posts. Once the bridge structure is released from the staging and settled a bit we will then attach the arches to the king posts.

When the arch ends are moved to their new positions, we can begin installing over 6 miles of sub-decking, then over 2 miles of oak on top. When the deck is complete, we'll install timber curbing to protect the trusses from moving traffic.

Unfortunately, we have been disassembling some of our finished new bridge framing to extract "original fabric" timbers found to be rotten by engineering after samples were sent to a Boston lab for analysis.

[Jim Ligon is Project Superintendent for Alpine Construction LLC of New York

July 7, 2013 - The metal roof has been installed about 3/4 of the length of the bridge. Siding is a quarter of the way along and the various coatings/painting starts July 8. The final concrete was placed last week. The stone work will finish up in the next week or so. - J.L.

The missing half of the bridge is back and the new roof extends almost from River Road to the Route 4 side.

The West Abutment will be backfilled with stone, gravel, and for earth stabilization, gabion baskets. Notice that the west end arches have been reattached to the abutment.

East end or River Road portal progress.

A view of the work from the east end.

The steel knee braces(from an earlier rehab) have been replaced. Notice the ax marks on the original upper chord.

A view of an original fabric upper chord and the peculiar truss. The arches were added in the early 1900s.

Old meets new.
 
 

A close-up of a laminated arch.

A bearing plate up close.

The work on the center pier is complete.
 

Roof work.
 

Cutting roof purlins to fit.

Another purlin ready.

Original upper chord section meets new.
 

A view of the top of the center pier looking west.
 

Pier attachments will begin with the west side arches with the east abutment to follow. The arches are temporarily blocked from the king posts until the bridge structure is released from the staging. Then we will reattach the arches to the kingposts.

These bearing plates will be bolted to the abutments and the arch ends trimmed to fit.