Ha ha, yeah the bridge always looked old and rusty, but it used to hold up a train and I bet it still would. My dad has told me about times they crossed it when there was no side railing and only two narrow strips laid across the ties for your tires. I'd say it was pretty sketchy feeling up there with no rails.
It's a beautiful view of the gorge from that vantage point. Last I knew, you could still drive a vehicle to the bridge from the Oneida side, so at least you could experience that part still.
Yeah those beetles did a major number on the pines around here. Don't think that's really a problem anymore though, I think they ran out of trees lol. It's weird how they killed them so fast and the trees didn't take long at all to rot enough to fall, but you can still see piles of them tangled up on the ground here and there refusing to finish the process. They were truly dangerous for a long time because the tops liked to fall out of them before the whole tree fell, especially in the wind.
The first winter right after the beetles came through brought a pretty big snow--we counted somewhere close to 75 trees down within sight of our house, most of which were criss-crossed over our yard. We literally climbed our way to my grandparents' house where there was a generator. We had no power for eight days. Of course, being young, I thought it was all a big adventure at the time.