I featured Southern Pacific’s massive Suisun Bay Bridge in my 2008 book North American Railroad Bridges. In this detailed book, I traced the development of bridges on American railroads and featured many of the most noteworthy spans.
Southern Pacific’s Suisun Bay Bridge opened for service on October 15, 1930, allowing the railroad to discontinue its intensive car ferry operations. It was the largest double track bridge west of the Mississippi.
I made this photograph with Brian Jennison on a foggy morning more than 16 years before the book’s publication. However this was not the image used to illustrate the bridge in the book. Instead, I opted for a broad-side silhouette exposed on Ektachrome in 1993.
Here’s a bridge photograph tip: to make a large span appear enormous crop the ends of the bridge, thus allowing the mind to expand the bridge to unseen ends.
Tracking the Light will post tomorrow at the usual time.
Tracking the Light posts every day.
First I’ve heard of it. Sorry, I can’t help you with that.
The currently available version of your “North American Railroad Bridges” is a reasonably priced Crestline Books reprint from earlier this year. Do you have any opinion of its production quality relative to the original 2008 version? I’m looking at purchasing the current version now or looking for the original version, depending. Thanks.
Bravo! Long live the Southern Pacific. TSH
Beautiful! It reminds me of Turner’s paintings on Steam and Speed! as well as revealing the spirit of industry