Tag Archives: Bridge Girders

New Pictures of Hastings Bridge Added to Our Picasa Web Album

Some new pictures of the Hastings bridge project in Hastings, Minnesota have been added to our Picasa Web Album: Hastings Bridge Construction.  The  pictures were taken by myself, David Graham, who has been in the area working on a load test program for a new bridge crossing the St. Croix River near Stillwater, Minnesota, and Griff Wigley, our blog coach who lives nearby in Northfield, Minnesota.  The pictures show some of the recently poured deck sections, the completed piers, and the main span arch construction.  Once completed, the main span arch will be moved onto barges, floated downstream, and lifted into place in one piece.  We have chronicled this interesting and successful project in several previous blog posts that can be found here.

Girders go in at Hastings

photo by Jim Adams of the Minneapolis Star Tribune

Massive prestressed concrete girders, some of them setting a record for the longest concrete girders used on a Minnesota bridge, have been set at the New Hastings Bridge, currently under construction in Hastings, Minnesota.  The largest girders are 174 feet long, 8 feet tall, and weigh 108 tons!  There is a video of one of these huge beams being delivered on a 16 axle truck, below.  An article from the December 2011 issue of Concrete Products magazine about the girders can be found here.  To date, all of the girders between the north abutment and main span have been placed.  Crews are preparing piers 5 and 6 for the main span steel arches, which are scheduled to be floated in by barge and lifted into place late this year.  MnDOT has two web cams where  the bridge construction and the arch construction can be viewed. The Minneapolis Star Tribune has also been following the construction.  Their latest article, which hails the bridge as “a monumental marvel,” can be found here.

Click here for more information on our website about the New Hastings Bridge

Click here for MnDOT’s project page