The Collaborative International Dictionary
Trestle \Tres"tle\, n. [OF. trestel, tresteay, F. tr['e]teau; probably from L. transtillum a little crossbeam, dim. of transtrum a crossbeam. Cf. Transom.] [Written also tressel.]
A movable frame or support for anything, as scaffolding, consisting of three or four legs secured to a top piece, and forming a sort of stool or horse, used by carpenters, masons, and other workmen; also, a kind of framework of strong posts or piles, and crossbeams, for supporting a bridge, the track of a railway, or the like.
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The frame of a table.
Trestle board, a board used by architects, draughtsmen, and the like, for drawing designs upon; -- so called because commonly supported by trestles.
Trestle bridge. See under Bridge, n.
Bridge \Bridge\ (br[i^]j), n. [OE. brig, brigge, brug, brugge, AS. brycg, bricg; akin to Fries. bregge, D. brug, OHG. brucca, G. br["u]cke, Icel. bryggja pier, bridge, Sw. brygga, Dan. brygge, and prob. Icel. br[=u] bridge, Sw. & Dan. bro bridge, pavement, and possibly to E. brow.]
A structure, usually of wood, stone, brick, or iron, erected over a river or other water course, or over a chasm, railroad, etc., to make a passageway from one bank to the other.
Anything supported at the ends, which serves to keep some other thing from resting upon the object spanned, as in engraving, watchmaking, etc., or which forms a platform or staging over which something passes or is conveyed.
(Mus.) The small arch or bar at right angles to the strings of a violin, guitar, etc., serving of raise them and transmit their vibrations to the body of the instrument.
(Elec.) A device to measure the resistance of a wire or other conductor forming part of an electric circuit.
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A low wall or vertical partition in the fire chamber of a furnace, for deflecting flame, etc.; -- usually called a bridge wall.
Aqueduct bridge. See Aqueduct.
Asses' bridge, Bascule bridge, Bateau bridge. See under Ass, Bascule, Bateau.
Bridge of a steamer (Naut.), a narrow platform across the deck, above the rail, for the convenience of the officer in charge of the ship; in paddlewheel vessels it connects the paddle boxes.
Bridge of the nose, the upper, bony part of the nose.
Cantalever bridge. See under Cantalever.
Draw bridge. See Drawbridge.
Flying bridge, a temporary bridge suspended or floating, as for the passage of armies; also, a floating structure connected by a cable with an anchor or pier up stream, and made to pass from bank to bank by the action of the current or other means.
Girder bridge or Truss bridge, a bridge formed by girders, or by trusses resting upon abutments or piers.
Lattice bridge, a bridge formed by lattice girders.
Pontoon bridge, Ponton bridge. See under Pontoon.
Skew bridge, a bridge built obliquely from bank to bank, as sometimes required in railway engineering.
Suspension bridge. See under Suspension.
Trestle bridge, a bridge formed of a series of short, simple girders resting on trestles.
Tubular bridge, a bridge in the form of a hollow trunk or rectangular tube, with cellular walls made of iron plates riveted together, as the Britannia bridge over the Menai Strait, and the Victoria bridge at Montreal.
Wheatstone's bridge (Elec.), a device for the measurement of resistances, so called because the balance between the resistances to be measured is indicated by the absence of a current in a certain wire forming a bridge or connection between two points of the apparatus; -- invented by Sir Charles Wheatstone.
Wiktionary
n. a bridge supported on a system of trestles
WordNet
n. a bridge supported by trestlework
Wikipedia
A trestle (sometimes tressel) is a rigid frame used as a support, historically a tripod used both as stools and to support tables at banquets. A trestle bridge is a bridge composed of a number of short spans supported by such frames. Since this type of bridge is sometimes called a "trestle" for short, each supporting frame is generally referred to as a bent. Timber and iron "trestles" (trestle bridges) were extensively used in the 19th century, the former making up from 1 to 3 per cent of the total length of the average railroad. In the 21st century, steel and sometimes concrete trestles are commonly used to bridge particularly deep valleys while timber trestles remain common in certain areas.
Many timber trestles were built in the 19th and early 20th centuries with the expectation that they would be temporary. Timber trestles were used to get the railroad to its destination. Once the railroad was running, it was used to transport the material to replace trestles with more permanent works, transporting and dumping fill around some trestles and transporting stone or steel to replace others with more permanent bridges.
In the later 20th century, tools such as the earthmover made it cheaper to construct a high fill directly instead of first constructing a trestle from which to dump the fill. Timber trestles remain common in some applications, most notably for bridge approaches crossing floodways, where earth fill would dangerously obstruct floodwater.
For the purposes of discharging material below, a coal trestle carried a dead-end track, rather than a bridge.
Usage examples of "trestle bridge".
Judah walks days, crosses a trestle bridge aswarm with workers and Remade brachiating from extending simian arms.
A rutted lane led down an embankment, across a trestle bridge that spanned what he took to be Knife River.
Trains from up north slowed down to twenty at South Fork afore goin' down a steep grade to a mighty bad curve and a wood trestle bridge.
The burning remnants of the wooden trestle bridge lay scattered below.
Without a word, he dropped below the trestle bridge to where the pins that held it fixed were concealed.
Ahead, the bulk of the trestle bridge loomed through the dark, its wooden beams glistening with rain.
Ryan yelled, seeing that the steel at their feet was now dulled with a thick layer of smeared grease, grease that ran all the way onto the towering trestle bridge over the gorge.
Three hours into the journey, the train crossed a log trestle bridge over a tributary feeding into the Caroní.
But upstream was a wooden trestle bridge, with a group just finishing it while another group tried to get at it with saws.
Nanci paced the sloping deck, looking worriedly at the dreary landscape, paying particular attention to a trestle bridge that carried the highway over what had once been a creek and was now a part of the Pacific Ocean.
Evidence of his first effort, the one he had lived to see completed, kept appearing on our right as we drove: a second trestle bridge, much like the one our highway sat on and parallel to it.