Back to trawling through the HABS HAER collection, looking for single-use index terms. Under “U-bolt”, we have this cute little truss* bridge in Pennsylvania.
Where are the U-bolts, you may ask? Connecting the floor beams (running across the deck) to the truss bottom chords:
Nice integration of the square-section U-bolt into the truss pin joint. Those oldey-timey engineers were fucking smart.
*Pratt through truss, partially double diagonal, since you were all waiting with bated trussed breath.
I thought U-bolts ceased operating in 1945.
There is a simple and elegant beauty I think only an engineer could appreciate in the pinned connection held to the load bearing bracket by the U-bolt.
Those don’t look fast enough to be U-Bolt.
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