Once just a gateway, canal's a destination

It's hard to think of the railroad bridge as a tourist attraction; it's more of a curiosity. The skeletal metallic giant, technically called a vertical lift bridge, has a 544-foot-long center span that is kept in the raised position 135 feet above water to allow vessels to pass beneath. When a train needs to cross the canal, which has happened roughly two or three times a day for the 72 years of the bridge's existence, only then is the span lowered into place.

But to look at the bridge in the up position is to wonder just how the heck a train gets over the canal. The answer: heavy-duty mechanics. In each of the bridge's two towers are four gigantic cogged wheels called sheaves, each 16 feet in diameter and weighing 34 tons. Using 40 steel cables, the sheaves raise 1,110-ton concrete-filled steel-box counterweights in each tower that lower the 2,200-ton center span to allow trains to pass. The sheaves rotate 2 1/2 times during a full movement of the span, which takes about 2 1/2 minutes.

Answering questions about the bridge is part of the job of federal workers at an attraction like the canal.

"I've been here since the early 1980s and the canal has become more of a tourist draw than ever before," Federle said. "Before, people would stop to use the restrooms or rest on their way to the Cape, but the canal really has become more of a destination."

The Herring Run Recreation Area at the midpoint of the waterway on Route 6 on the mainland side is one of the canal's most popular features. It has a sizable information booth staffed year-round, restrooms and a 135-space parking lot that gets jammed on summer days; more than 340,000 people stopped by this year. Many saltwater fishermen pepper the riprap canal walls going after striped bass or bluefish.