SMART offering to give away Haystack Landing bridge over Petaluma River

In the market for a railroad bridge?

The agency planning for commuter rail in the North Bay has one to give. It’s slightly used, and could use a fresh coat of paint.

Otherwise, the Haystack Landing bridge still operates pretty much as it did when it was installed in 1904 over the Petaluma River, near what today is the Highway 101 overpass at Lakeville Highway.

“It’s a good old bridge,” Gregg Evensen, a signal maintenance worker, said last week while operating the bridge’s turning mechanisms.

Sonoma-Marin Area Rail Transit is offering to give away the aging railroad bridge in order to make way for a new span for the future commuter rail line.

There are a few catches, not least of which are the cost and logistics of removing and re-installing 300,000 pounds of American-forged steel.

Preferred applicants must commit to retaining the span’s historic nature. And you can forget about connecting the bridge to an existing road or railway.

This baby is purely for walking on, riding a (non-motorized) vehicle on or just to look at, as a reminder of bygone days.

“You could haul it out and be the only kid on the block with a rotating swing bridge in the yard,” said John Riley, SMART’s project engineer for bridge replacement.

The Haystack bridge was manufactured in 1903 by the Pennsylvania Steel Co. and brought cross-country to Petaluma, where it was put in place a year later at its current location. It operates using a 5-horsepower electric motor, fabric belts and bevel gears to pivot slowly on a turntable that is 10 feet in diameter.

Rather than spend an estimated $20 million to rehabilitate the bridge, SMART instead has purchased a used drawbridge that had been used in Galveston, Texas, to serve a similar purpose in Petaluma.

Riley said overhauling the Haystack bridge would have required almost a complete rebuild because the steel used in the structure is old and at the end of its serviceable life.

Nevertheless, when the bridge goes, it will take 111 years of local maritime history with it.

State preservationists determined in 2005 that the bridge was eligible for inclusion on the National Register of Historic Places because of the pivotal role the span played in the development of the Northwest Pacific Railroad’s Sonoma branch, and as a “distinguished example” of a moveable railroad span.

The federal designation was never made, however. Had it been, SMART’s options for rehabilitating or removing the span would have been more limited.

The agency nevertheless noted the span’s historical nature in the environmental impact report it submitted for the work, and as part of its proposal to give the bridge away, is giving preference to organizations that will commit to respecting that heritage.

Riley said the list of organizations the agency sent proposals to included numerous railroad associations and museums in California, as well as the Historic Bridge Foundation in Austin, Texas.

SMART has a two-week window in September to remove the bridge and bring the new one on-line. Riley acknowledged that’s not much time to complete the job. “That’s probably the biggest deal-breaker,” he said.

SMART has the option of selling the bridge as scrap metal. Riley estimated that could fetch around $25,000, which would be paid to the contractor that performed the demolition and haul-away.

Another option would be to give the bridge to a private individual, but in that case, SMART demands compensation equivalent to the current scrap metal value of the structure.

“Otherwise, you’d basically be handing someone $25,000 worth of steel and they’d turn around and scrap it,” Riley said.

The foundation for the new bridge has already been laid. Known as a bascule drawbridge, it uses a counterweight to lift the “leaf,” or rail bed, into an almost vertical position. The drawbridge will open or close in about 90 seconds, compared with the 2 1/2 to 3 minutes needed for the swing bridge.

At 124.5 feet long, the drawbridge is roughly 56 feet shorter than the swing bridge. The new bridge also provides an additional 33 feet of navigational clearance for mariners.

SMART has budgeted ?$16.3 million for the bridge replacement.