Excerpt:
Gentlemen:
It gives me great pleasure to be enabled to report the Niagara Suspension Rail Way Bridge complete in all its parts. The success of this work may now be considered an established fact. The trains of the New York Central, and of the Great Western Rail Road in Canada, have been crossing regularly since the 18th of March, averaging over 30 trips per day.
One single observation of the passage of a train over the Niagara Bridge, will convince the most skeptical, that the practicability of Suspended Railway Bridges, so much doubted heretofore, has been successfully demonstrated.
Annotation:
Online library of historical bridge design manuals and books from Lehigh University.