[4] Built by the Delaware, Lackawanna and Western Railroad (DL&W), the bridge is owned today by Norfolk Southern Railway and is used daily for regular through freight service.

[5] The DL&W built the viaduct as part of its 39.6-mile (63.7 km) Nicholson Cutoff, which replaced a winding and hilly section of the route between Scranton, Pennsylvania, and Binghamton, New York, saving 3.6 miles (5.8 km), 21 minutes of passenger train time, and one hour of freight train time.

[10] The steel estimate proved accurate; the bridge ultimately used a bit less concrete than expected: 167,000 cubic yards (128,000 m3),[7] making the total weight approximately 670,000,000 pounds (300,000,000 kg).

[18] ASCE recognized the bridge as "not only a great feat of construction skill" but also a "bold and successful departure from contemporary, conventional concepts of railroad location in that it carried a mainline transversely to the regional drainage pattern, effectively reducing the distance and grade impediments...".

[18] At the time, the decision was made to build the bridge out of reinforced concrete, railroad engineers had little experience with this material.