January 28, 2005: erecting the last pair of shark fin edge girders
It all starts here on the west side of the bridge - the approach and on ramps
Once you get to the bridge, there is a rather large sign so that you
will not get lost at night
Most of the erection cranes have been removed and the deck surface is waiting
for the final latex-concrete surface. Going west, you enter under
the west pylon (left) and exit from east pylon (right)
Meanwhile, here is the High Steel Structure team, Pat, George, Joe,
Dick and Brian, sort of chilling out on the top of the west pylon after
they finished the drilling and reaming. Pat Risser took these two photos.
And you can see from the photo (below) of the gap between east and west
platforms, the south edge girder is being erected (look for the three
perpendicular cantilever beams for supporting the bicycle floor panels).
It seems that
the HSS team made it to the top a couple of hours before I arrived and they
were able to watch the placement of the south shark fin girder.
Several hours later, I showed up and watched PBC
erecting the last shark-fin edge girder (north side)
The gap between edge girders will be filled with a splice girder that
was drilled by
High Steel Structures team
on January 26. The team worked hard and apparently they had a treat at the
end of their preparations.
To get it
right required precision measurmenet and here you can see the extend that
surveyers will go to find awkward places to hold the range pole
These guys are dressed for cold weather and splicing the edge girders.
Note the blue color of the nuts - that is both an indication of temperature
and identifies this as never-been-used-before.
Waiting for the floor girders - note the size scale relative to the
workers bolting the splice plate (left). Looking along the west girder to the
east (right).
The south gap patiently waiting for the floor girders, rolling out the
safety nets and the Freysinnet will do their magic with the cables.
Feb 1, 2005: with floor girders in place
Feb 1, 2005: a sky (gap) walker
There was some concern about the nonuniformity of coloration on the
pylons. So an experiment with sand blasting was started. Here you can see
the before sand blasting (November 4, 2004) of the west pylon.
Here is the newly sand blasted
west pylon (January 28, 2005). Note the more uniform
coloration of the pylon face. Obviously, the experiment was a success.
A view showing the differences (compare the tops of the two pylons)
in face appearance of the west and east pylons
I have met no one associated with the building of the new Cooper River
Bridge that did not have a huge pride in their work, both individually and
collectively. You will see flags placed at various points within the
construction site - another demonstration of the collective pride of PBC,
SCDOT and the contractors. Here, Marvin was untangling the flag (left), and
earlier had insisted of taking a photo of me. My wife noted the ungloved
hand - my camera trigger finger and I was too numb to put the glove back
onto my hand (right) (the temp was about 5C with 20 mph winds).
