Workers are chipping away at the concrete underpass on Algonquin Blvd. at Spruce St., sending the century-old railroad underpass into history. In this week’s local history feature, museum director-curator Karen Bachmann points out it wasn’t always concrete.
“It was wooden bracing,” she states. It was like any other rail bridge that would have been built at the turn of the 20th century, so lots of moorings and that kind of thing.”
When it was replaced by concrete, there were pylons underneath, and a division between traffic lanes. Bachmann says cars hitting those objects happened often.
“Now it’s flooding for us. But before it was people who just sort of drove through, and hit the side walls. I don’t know how they drove, but anyways, those old cars were a problem, obviously.”
Once the underpass is gone, the roadway will be levelled off… ending the history of flooding.
We thank Karen Bachmann and the museum for making our weekly feature possible.