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Battling high winds and snow gusts, engineers yesterday rolled 4.5 million pounds of subway cars onto the aging Williamsburg Bridge, in a dramatic test of the span's corroded cables.
"Every second of this bridge's life is being monitored right now," said Sam Schwartz, chief engineer for the city Department of Transportation.
After closing the bridge to all traffic at 3 a.m., officials loaded 56 subway cars - each weighing 80,000 pounds - onto its two tracks. When the morning light was sufficient, a helicopter-borne photographer snapped three-dimensional photographs of the sagging cables. Simultaneously, a surveyor at East River Park bounced laser beams off the trusses to measure movement.
Of greatest concern was the bridge's northernmost cable, which engineers said is the most severely pitted. "If that goes, everything goes," said Monica Panzani, an engineer for the department.
The culprits, officials said, are rust, water damage and pigeon droppings.
Designers of the 84-year-old bridge tried to save money by...