practically all the inhabitants of this place. Placing of the new span was the first step in the reconstruction of the old bridge which is one of the last wooden railroad bridges left in the country. Two more spans of the same weight and dimensions as the first will be put in place, one on September 18 and the other October 16. The method employed by the engineers in making the substitution was apparently simple. The new steel structure was built alongside of the old wooden span, false work erected on the upstream side. Similar false work was built out on the down stream side. Both old and the new structures were set on several hundred small rollers and when all was ready cables which had been rigged from two railroad cranes were attached to the steel span and the signal to pull was given. As the new span rolled from its position it pushed the old structure from its place on the stone piers to a resting place on the false work on the down stream side. Both spans made the journey in less than 10 minutes and an hour later the bridge was ready for regular train service. The work was under the direction of P. J. Lang, bridge engineer for the Baltimore & Ohio railroad and A. C. Clark, district engineer of the same road. The third and final section was put into place on October 16, 1921. For more than 40 years, the bridge carried a branch of the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad's Northern Subdivision over the river. Embankments carrying the line on each side of the river were connected to the bridge by wooden trestles. The branch was closed in 1964; but the rails were not removed until the early 1990s. The route is now in the process of being converted to a rail trail. At the same time the Pennsylvania Railroad also had a line that ran through Foxburg but it too has been removed and is now in the process of becoming a long-distance walking route. Removal The Foxburg Bridge was demolished shortly after 9:30 AM on July 24, 2008 using shaped charges. These were placed at load-bearing points on the bridge causing it to collapse in on itself. The demolition featured in an episode of The Detonators on the Discovery Channel. The iron work and the piers were removed shortly afterwards. References