Niagara Cantilever Bridge

<!--http://maps.google.com/maps?ll=43.108135,-79.058604&spn=0.005618,0.009734&t=h&hl=en -->The Niagara Cantilever Bridge or Michigan Central Railway Cantilever Bridge was a cantilever bridge across the Niagara Gorge. An international railway-only bridge between Canada and the United States, it connected Niagara Falls, New York, and Niagara Falls, Ontario, located just south of the Whirlpool Bridge, and opened to traffic in 1883, it was replaced by the Michigan Central Railway Steel Arch Bridge in 1925.

==Background==<!-- Consider moving background to Cantilever bridge -->Although British engineers suggested using the cantilever form as a replacement for non-statically determinate trusses as early as 1846, the first modern cantilever actually built was Heinrich Gerber's Hassfurt Bridge over the Main River in Germany (1867), with a central span of 38 m.

The next important cantilever was built by American engineer C. Shaler Smith, ten years later in 1877. It provided the first practical test of the application of the cantilever principle to long-span bridge design. He built what was then the world's longest cantilever for the Cincinnati Southern Railway over a 366 m wide and 84 m deep gorge of the Kentucky River near Dixville, Kentucky.

Other important counterbalanced spans are the Michigan Central Railroad bridge over the Niagara Gorge (this bridge), designed by Charles Conrad Schneider/Apolda in 1883. With cantilever arms supporting a simple suspended...
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