Talk:Mission Railway Bridge

Name

I'm from Mission, or used to be; is this the bridge's official name or a wiki coinage-of-convenience. It used to be, before the new highway bridge, just "the Mission Bridge" but while we might have said "the rail bridge" after it's more likely that we'd say "the CPR bridge".....I think "Mission CPR Bridge" might be a better name for this article, unless the title as-is is official. Citations for either would be in editions of the Fraser Valley Record, Mission's newspaper.Skookum1 (talk) 02:06, 23 August 2008 (UTC)

Note on map

The map here hsould be a highway-based map, not an RD-based location map, which is pointless.Skookum1 (talk) 17:42, 25 August 2008 (UTC)

Older bridge? Or ferry?

Before 1909, there was rail access to the Central Valley from Seattle, though I'm not sure which US rail line built it; I'd thought there was a bridge but maybe there was a ferry from the Matsqui side, i.e. before the Great Flood of 1894. I'll write the Mission Museum & Archives and have a look in BC Archives, as I'm reasonably certain that there was a bridge at this location before the building of the New Wesminster Rail Bridge....Skookum1 (talk) 19:19, 2 June 2009 (UTC)

Yes, there was a bridge built in 1891, apparently by the CPR, to connect to the Seattle, Lake Shore and Eastern Railway at Sumas, WA. Trying to find more thorough cites than what I've found so far, and confirmation that it was a CPR spur line rather than, as I'd thought before, an American spur line....Skookum1 (talk) 20:16, 2 June 2009 (UTC)

I've added it to the text, since found a usable cite (others were in difficult to read and unsearchable PDF copies of the Times-Colonist); I don't think it needs its own article and I haven' been able to find out why it was replaced. There's a common misconception that the New Westminster Bridge was the first crossing of the Fraser in the Lower Mainland and the first rail connection to the US so this is towards correcting that....Skookum1 (talk) 11:49, 5 June 2009 (UTC)

I recall reading something c 1980 concurring with the idea that the original 1891 bridge was damaged by a flood. Mn1167 (talk) 21:15, 27 February 2024 (UTC)

Error- not the first bridge below Siska

The claim that the 1891 Mission CPR railway bridge was the first bridge below Siska (which was the first CPR and first railway bridge across the Fraser is incorrect. The Alexandria Suspension Bridge and even its replacement both predate the 1891 CPR bridge as well as the Siska CPR bridge. Mn1167 (talk) 21:32, 27 February 2024 (UTC)