Photographing the Bonnet Carre Spillway Bridge, Louisiana

Paul Chaplo, MFA, AIA-Assoc. Architectural Photographer

Imagine a historic two-mile long railroad bridge at the edge of Lake Pontchartrain and your photography assignment is to capture this marvel of engineering before it is replaced -- and you need to do it with large format film! Our camera and tripod weigh about 30 pounds--a modern version of what Ansel Adams used. That was our assignment for the Bonnet Carre Spillway Bridge just north of New Orleans. After extensive training for working on-track and at heights, we gained access to the bridge by airboat and by hi-rail. The latter is a truck that is equipped with retractable train-wheels that can ride on the tracks. It was quite an experience, and we needed to work between trains and maintenance vehicles. Crew and equipment were scrambling to do work before the spillway opened. The Bonnet Carre Spillway is a massive flood control structure that releases flood waters from the adjacent Mississippi River. On the bridge, we wore safety harnesses with fall-arresting lanyards attached to an anchor that literally slid on a train rail on the bridge over the water. In the swamp around us were numerous and venomous Cottonmouth water moccasin snakes, and a few alligators, but we completed the assignment with flying colors. Later, I learned that the bridge was originally Illinois Central Railroad, and literally crossed by the train "The City of New Orleans" that is immortalized in the Arlo Guthrie song by that title.