The Fredericton Railway Bridge is a former railway bridge in Fredericton, New Brunswick, Canada now used to carry pedestrians and cyclists. It crosses the Saint John River from the east end of Fredericton's central business district on the west bank of the river to the former community of South Devon (amalgamated into Fredericton in 1945) on the east bank. Since 1997, it has been used as a pedestrian bridge and is part of the Sentier NB Trail system and also part of the Trans Canada Trail. Fredericton claims it is the "world's longest walking bridge." On June 7, 2008 the bridge was renamed the Bill Thorpe Walking Bridge, after a founder of the Fredericton Trail System. As of 2018, over 600,000 users cross the bridge every year. In 2022 the bridge became the start point of the “Bill Thorpe Walking Bridge parkrun” which is a 5km event which takes place weekly on a Saturday utilising the bridge and the South Riverfront trail. Structure The bridge consists of 9 spans crossing a distance of over water and was constructed in 1938. It is a through truss design built entirely of steel and sits upon 8 concrete piers in the water and 2 concrete abutments, 1 on each bank. The bridge has a vertical clearance of for vessels above the navigation channel which runs under the third span from the west bank; this span is a swing span and was used to permit passage of river vessels with a higher air draught. The swing span was last operated in 1976 to permit the passage of barges upriver carrying construction equipment for the Westmorland Street Bridge project. History A railway bridge had been proposed in the Fredericton area since the 1860s after an initial survey by the European and North American Railway "Western Extension" project. The E&NA "Western Extension" was building the line connecting St. Croix, New Brunswick with an existing E&NA line from Saint John to Shediac. Initial surveys of the line east from the Canada–United States border at Vanceboro-St. Croix had proposed a route due east from what would become Harvey Station to the Saint John River near Kingsclear, passing through the west end of Fredericton and crossing to the east bank of the river before continuing along the shore of Grand Lake to connect with the Saint John-Shediac line near Salisbury. This project became such a certainty by the mid-1860s