Thames River Drawbridge Swap – Part One

Ahhh, finally caught up. Well, almost. Before our trip to Hershey, PA this past Tuesday, I was able to head down to Groton to get a few shots of the drawbridge as the contractors were preparing to pull the old bascule span out. Unfortunatley, it took them longer to pull it, so I didn’t get any shots of the span actually being pulled out. Oh, well, you can’t win ’em all, I guess… At least I got a few shots of the old bridge before it was changed out.

I got down to Groton early – about 8am – to find a nice calm Thames River, so I got a couple reflection shots right off the bat from the closest parking lot to the bridge.

[cpg_imagefixthumb:7332] [cpg_imagefixthumb:7331]

Even at this hour there was a handful of people there for the day’s events, so I got a shot of a couple of them.

[cpg_imagefixthumb:7330]

And one shot with some of the wildflowers in the foreground

[cpg_imagefixthumb:7329]

Not long after that, a tug brought a barge north from Electric Boat to the Mohawk shipyard north of the drawbridge

[cpg_imagefixthumb:7328]

Throwing the telephoto on, I got a closeup shot of some Amtrak workers on the bridge preparing to lift the span out

[cpg_imagefixthumb:7327]

Then the tugboat came back south

[cpg_imagefixthumb:7326]

And an unusual Blackhawk helicopter buzzed overhead

[cpg_imagefixthumb:7325]

A couple more bridge shots

[cpg_imagefixthumb:7324] [cpg_imagefixthumb:7323]

Then a US Coast Guard cutter came into the scene, but if you look aboard, you’ll notice that there’s a photographer (probably from the New London Day) on board.

[cpg_imagefixthumb:7322] [cpg_imagefixthumb:7321] [cpg_imagefixthumb:7319] [cpg_imagefixthumb:7318] [cpg_imagefixthumb:7317] [cpg_imagefixthumb:7316]

And a quick shot of some of the flowers I was stepping on

[cpg_imagefixthumb:7320]

But as we were waiting for the span to be pulled out, apparently they hit a snag on the hinge side, and contractors were cutting some of the metal, so I got a telephoto shot of some of the billowing smoke

[cpg_imagefixthumb:7315]

Not long after that, another tugboat came along, but this time with a videographer aboard taking some footage.

[cpg_imagefixthumb:7314] [cpg_imagefixthumb:7313]

Then the cutting went to the other side of the span, but it sounded like they were having issues with the oxygen tanks, and I got a shot of one of the tanks venting a bit of O2

[cpg_imagefixthumb:7312]

Just then I noticed what time it was, and had to head out. So I got one last shot of the crowd watching the action. Also, to the left of the frame were two Groton fire engines watching the action as well.

[cpg_imagefixthumb:7311]

And that was it for this day. As it turned out, the span didn’t get pulled until early afternoon, so there was no way I would catch it. Next post, though, you’ll see the new span in place, and the old span being taken away on its final journey – to the scrapper.

Thanks for looking!
Tom