this post was submitted on 20 Nov 2023
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People back then must have had much better balance. There's always a few in photos standing in places that were certain death.
Plus I do have to wonder, how over or under are the specs for such a thing? It seems to be just "we'll put a bunch of big posts and lots of boards, it'll hold a train."
For reference there is a (low height but very long) wood trestle near me similar in design to this that goes for probably a mile over a swamp and it runs modern trains just fine.
They did some upgrades a while back but they were to the few metal parts over the road. The wood parts are still good enough to hold up modern trains.
I assume they had some idea of how much weight the wood could hold up. Also keep in mind those older trees were much stronger than modern lumber since it was old growth.
How does this work? I've never heard of this. If it was significantly stronger wouldn't they still produce it today, for specific uses?
Any old growth left is likely protected.
Nobody is producing lumber planning for several hundred years into the future. And that's what I'm talking about.
For modern lumber trees are grown for 20-40 years depending on location and type of tree. Whereas early on you're talking tons of trees that were hundreds of years old.
If you look at an old 2x4 vs a new one you can see the difference. The old one will have a much tighter growth rings than the new one. This is from it frowing slowly over many years.
But now they just want as much lumber as fast as possible.
modern people just tend to be in bad shape from static office jobs and overeating low quality food. these people who worked at heights building bridges were aware that they had to be careful and sure footed. also you can tell they are all reasonably fit, which makes balance much more natural
I guess there's a bit of selection there as well. If you've managed to not kill yourself for a year or so, you probably know what you're doing. It's not that there weren't deaths, it was just expected that some wouldn't learn the job well enough to continue doing it.
Seems to be a recurring theme with historic workplace photos: