The Tazewell & Peoria Railroad Illinois River lift bridge, which links Peoria and East Peoria Illinois with its Illinois River crossing was struck by a towboat and closed to rail traffic Monday.
The towboat was shoving two barges when it struck the Tazewell & Peoria Railroad vertical lift bridge section over the Illinois River Sunday about 8:20 p.m. The collision, with the bottom of the lift section of the bridge, sheared off the pilot house of the boat, whose crew escaped with minor injuries.
U.S. Coast Guard Lt. Daniel Wilkinson said, “The investigation is ongoing; the master of the vessel was on watch when they collided with the bridge.”
Wilkinson said he was very lucky since he was hit with debris but escaped serious injury. The coast guard maintains a buoy tender, the USCGC Sangamon, on the East Peoria side of the river about one-mile North of the shortline’s lift bridge.
The bridge was closed for several hours while an inspection was made by railroad employees and the coast guard, re-opening around 2 p.m. Tuesday. No fuel leaked from the 81-foot-long twin-screw towboat, which remained afloat and is tied up at the Peoria Barge Terminal on the West bank, just south of the bridge.
The next closest crossing of the Illinois River is the former Chicago & North Western (now Union Pacific) bridge at Pekin and the former Santa Fe transcon crossing operated by BNSF Railway at Chillicothe in Illinois. Unlike Peoria and Pekin, the BNSF crossing was built high enough to not need a lift span.
River traffic radios the bridge, which is raised and lowered by a bridge tender in a building at Bridge Junction, which formerly held the dispatching offices for the short line and predecessor Peoria & Pekin Union Railway. The current bridge replaced a bascule bridge in the mid 1980s.
Bridge ‘’strikes’’ are not uncommon on inland waterways.
