# Flagler's Folly - the Bahia Honda Road/Rail bridge



## Pete Thornton (Jan 2, 2008)

We drove down to Key West this week, and I kept my eyes open for relics of the Overseas Railay - Flagler's Florida East Coast Railroad extension to Key West, which produced most of US-1, the 'Oversaes Highway' to the bottom of the Keys.

Having been abandoned in the 1930s (after a hurricane wiped out quite a lot of it,) there isn't much to see except several bridges, where the road has a newer multi-lane concrete bridge adjacent to the old RR bridge. One of the more interesting ones is Bahia Honda, where a truss bridge spanned the channel. I had read that they put a road on top of the railroad after abandonment and used it for cars. Bahia Honda was narrow, being a truss, so they added a roadway on top!











This is the approach on the south end which consisted of a conventional steel deck brdige up to the trusses. They jacked up the steel deck and added supports until it was as high as the trusses, then ran the roadway over the top !! 










And here's the center of the bridge (taken from the moving car by the wife.) Interesting stuff!


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## Greg Elmassian (Jan 3, 2008)

You probably saw Bill's thread before: *http://www.mylargescale....trong>**

Nice pictures of the bridge showing the road on top. 


Greg*


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## afinegan (Jan 2, 2008)

Here are some pictures of some sunsets with the railroad bridges in them that I personally took when I was there 2 years ago (Bahia Honda State Park is absolutely beautiful, picture perfect!)
























And this is a pic of the 7 mile bridge portion of the old railroad bridges leaving marathon heading toward pigeon key


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