WEAVER`S BEND LOWER TWIN BRIDGE

The Weaver's Bend - Lower Twin Bridge, the second of two Norfolk-Southern Railroad bridges over the French Broad River on the S-Line just before the Tennessee-North Carolina state line from Newport to Hot Springs, NC. This is bridge number two across the French Broad between Morristown Junction and Asheville, NC. The bridge built in 1927 by the Virginia Bridge and Iron Company consists of four spans, all of them Baltimore through trusses (one of only two bridges in the Baltimore truss style in Tennessee). Each span is 110 feet long, and are all positively skewed 30% because of the bridge approach to the curves of the riverbanks. Total length is 541 feet. An examination of the piers in the river shows the newer concrete supports this bridge is on are attached to the older stone piers, indicating this current bridge was the stronger replacement of the original bridge on the old stone-layered supports. That original one built in the early 1880's connected the old East Tennessee, Virginia and Georgia Railroad, and the Western North Carolina Railroad.