Starrucca Viaduct is a stone arch bridge that spans Starrucca Creek near Lanesboro, Pennsylvania, in the United States. At the time of its construction, the bridge was thought to be the most expensive railway bridge in the world, at a cost of $320,000, and it was the largest stone rail viaduct in the mid-19th century. It was designed by Julius W. Adams and James P. Kirkwood and built in 1847-1848 by New York and Erie Railroad, of locally-quarried random ashlar bluestone, except for three brick interior longitudinal spandrel walls and the concrete base portions of the piers and deck covering. This may have been the first structural use of concrete in American bridge construction.

The viaduct was built to solve an engineering problem posed by the wide valley of Starrucca Creek. The railroad initially considered building an embankment, but abandoned the idea because it was impractical. The Erie Railroad was well-financed by British investors, but even with money available, most American contractors at the time were incapable of the task. Julius W. Adams, the superintending engineer of construction in the area, hired James P. Kirkwood, a civil engineer who had previously worked on the Long Island Rail Road. Accounts differ as to whether Kirkwood worked on the bridge himself, or whether Adams was responsible for the plans with Kirkwood working as a subordinate. It took 800 workers, each paid about $1 per day, to complete the bridge in a year. The falsework for the bridge required more than half a million feet of cored and hewn timbers.

The bridge has been in continual use for more than a century and a half, and is still in use by the Norfolk Southern Railway. In 2005 Norfolk Southern sold the portion of the line from Port Jervis, New York to Binghamton, New York to the Delaware Otsego Corporation, who operates it under the name Central New York Railway. The only railroad currently using it is the New York, Susquehanna and Western Railway. The viaduct is listed on the National Register of Historic Places and is a Historic Civil Engineering Landmark.

References

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