Merchants Bridge

The Merchants Bridge, officially the Merchants Memorial Mississippi Rail Bridge, is a rail bridge crossing the Mississippi River between St. Louis, Missouri, and Venice, Illinois. The bridge is owned by the Terminal Railroad Association of St. Louis. It opened in May 1889 and crosses the river 3 miles (5 km) north of the Eads Bridge.^[3]

Merchants Bridge
The bridge in 2025
Coordinates	38°40′29″N 90°11′10″W
Carries	Freight and passenger traffic Union Pacific, BNSF, Amtrak
Crosses	Mississippi River
Locale	St. Louis, Missouri, and Venice, Illinois
Official name	Merchants Memorial Mississippi Rail Bridge
Owner	Terminal Railroad Association of St. Louis
Characteristics
Design	Steel truss bridge
Total length	2,490 feet (760 m)
Longest span	520 feet (160 m)
Clearance above	83 feet (25 m)
Capacity	70 trains per day[1]
Rail characteristics
No. of tracks	2
History
Opened	1889
Rebuilt	2022
Statistics
Daily traffic	32.3 trains per day (as of 2014[update])[2]
Location

History

The bridge in its original configuration in 2014. The exposed masonry of the piers and the lattice girders distinguish it from the current configuration.

The bridge was originally built by the St. Louis Merchants Exchange after it lost control of the Eads Bridge it had built to the Terminal Railroad. The Exchange feared a Terminal Railroad monopoly on the bridges but it would eventually lose control of the Merchants Bridge also.

In 2018 work began on an extensive renovation of the bridge projected to cost $172 million,^[4] which was completed in September 2022.^[1] The project involved completely replacing the three main bridge spans, and encasing the masonry piers to seismically retrofit them.^[5]

Prior to the reconstruction, the bridge's capacity was roughly 32 trains per day, with only one train traveling at 5 miles per hour able to cross the bridge at a time. Following the renovation, the capacity was 70 trains per day, with two trains able to pass each other simultaneously at up to 20 miles per hour (32 km/h).^[1][6] In addition, the allowable train width increased from about 13.5 ft (4.1 m) to 15 ft (4.6 m), and the railcar weight capacity increased from 286,000 lb (130,000 kg) to 315,000 lb (143,000 kg). The final cost of the project was $222 million.^[5]

See also

• List of crossings of the Upper Mississippi River