The Henry Ford Bridge , also known as the Badger Avenue Bridge , is a bridge located in Los Angeles County , Southern California . It carries the Pacific Harbor Line railroad across the Cerritos Channel to Terminal Island from San Pedro , to serve the Port of Los Angeles and Port of Long Beach . It was built to accommodate operations at the Ford Long Beach Assembly plant which opened in 1930 and was closed in 1959.
4-628: The original 1924 bascule bridge was dismantled and replaced in 1996 by a vertical-lift bridge . The contract for the bascule bridge was placed by The Los Angeles Board of Harbor Commissioners in 1922. The bridge was designed by Joseph Baermann Strauss and fabricated by the American Bridge Company . It was formed of a pair of 110-foot (34 m) trunnion bascule leaves which formed a one span Warren through-truss . There were two 50 feet (15 m) tower spans and two 200 feet (61 m) timber approaches. This article about
8-639: A bridge in California is a stub . You can help Misplaced Pages by expanding it . This article about a specific rail bridge in the United States is a stub . You can help Misplaced Pages by expanding it . Bascule bridge A bascule bridge (also referred to as a drawbridge or a lifting bridge ) is a moveable bridge with a counterweight that continuously balances a span , or leaf, throughout its upward swing to provide clearance for boat traffic. It may be single- or double-leafed. The name comes from
12-411: The counterweights to the span may be located above or below the bridge deck. The fixed- trunnion (sometimes a "Chicago" bascule) rotates around a large axle that raises the span(s). The Chicago bascule name derives from the location where it is widely used, and is a refinement by Joseph Strauss of the fixed-trunnion. The rolling lift trunnion (sometimes a "Scherzer" rolling lift), raises
16-583: The French term for balance scale , which employs the same principle. Bascule bridges are the most common type of movable span because they open quickly and require relatively little energy to operate, while providing the possibility for unlimited vertical clearance for marine traffic. Bascule bridges have been in use since ancient times, but until the adoption of steam power in the 1850s, very long, heavy spans could not be moved quickly enough for practical application. There are three types of bascule bridge and
#918081