Democratic Sentinel, Volume 20, Number 35, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 4 September 1896 — Ready-Made Bridges. [ARTICLE]

Ready-Made Bridges.

“Ready-made bridges are something new the sun,” explained a wellknown and prominent bridge builder, “for there are a number of concerns now which keep on hand a full stock of ready-made iron bridges of nearly all sizes. By this I do not mean that I could pick up ready-made a bridge as long as the Long Bridge. I would have no difficulty, however, in finding ready-made and packed so that it could be shipped in less than half a day after the order was received a number of bridges as long as the socalled Chain bridge on the upper Potomac; The customers for the readymade bridges are mostly railroad companies, who, when theywant anything, want it mighty bad. ami are in an awful hurry for It. Only recently a railroad bridge was washed away from a stream in Pennsylvania. In less than two hours a bridge ninetyseven feet long and nineteen and a half feet wide was ordered by wire. In six hours every part of it was shipped, and in two hours less than three days’ time trains were running regularly over It. It had to be hauled over two hundred miles, too.” The bones of aged persons having more lime in them than those of young people, are therefore more brittle.