Wilburton Trestle, Railway bridge in Bellevue, United States
The Wilburton Trestle is a wooden railway trestle 102 feet (31 m) high and 975 feet (297 m) long, the longest of its kind in the Pacific Northwest. It carried a single track of a former Northern Pacific branch line over a valley that was once an extension of Lake Washington. A short section was replaced in 1973 by concrete piers and steel deck girders where the Lake Hills Connector road passes through.
Northern Pacific Railroad built this bridge in 1904 to connect Renton and Snohomish for freight transport. Four major reconstructions between 1913 and 1943 kept the structure standing, and it later carried aircraft parts until it closed in 2008.
The trestle's name comes from the Wilburton neighbourhood of Bellevue it crosses. From 1992 to July 2007 the Spirit of Washington Dinner Train ran over it between Renton and Woodinville, and excursion trains nicknamed Casey Jones crossed in the 1950s and 1960s. Drivers on Interstate 405 see the structure as a landmark above the freeway.
Construction on the trestle began in 2024 and is scheduled for completion in 2027, at an estimated cost of $37 million funded by a county levy, state carbon credits, and grants from Amazon and Kaiser Permanente. The work covers deck repairs and seismic upgrades for the Eastrail pedestrian and bicycle trail network. Until it opens, the structure is best seen from Interstate 405 through Bellevue.
The last train to cross the trestle was a BNSF freight hauling Boeing 737 fuselages to Renton on February 26, 2008. The trestle is often mistaken for the one seen in the 1963 Elvis Presley film It Happened at the World's Fair, but evidence points to a bridge over the White River between Enumclaw and Buckley.
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