BNSF Railway Replaces Busy Mississippi Crossing
span to the east was replaced with three small- er, temporary girder spans to permit installa- tion of the much longer lift span. Due to its center pivot, the old swing span’s
150-foot opening was a navigational hazard, and the U.S. Coast Guard ranked the bridge third highest on its list for barge strikes. It was agreed that the width of the channel under the new lift span would be 307′-6″, greatly reduc- ing the likelihood of river traffic striking the bridge. The $70 million cost of the new lift span has been financed primarily through the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 plus previous appropriations under the Truman-Hobbs Act, through the Coast Guard. By August 2011 the lift span contractor, Ames Construction, Inc., had completing minor ad- justments and final inspections prior to releas- ing responsibility for the bridge to the railroad. Now that the lift span is finished, the next
phase is to replace the seven original through truss spans by Walsh Construction of Chicago, which began in June 2010. The new 250-foot steel replacements will be placed on reinforced concrete foundations, which, combined with the new lift span, will give the railroad an entirely new bridge which meets 21st century engineer- ing standards. The individual components of the spans are being fabricated off-site and as- sembled on the east bank of the Mississippi,
ABOVE, KARL RETHWISCH; BELOW, THERESA RENNER
and then floated by barge to the site. They will be installed two at a time, and the old spans will be cut up on-site and barged downstream to a
A coal train (left) crosses the new BNSF Railway lift bridge at Burlington, Iowa, on October 13, 2011; the old swing span (above) was a hazard to river traffic. The new bridge (below) has a chan- nel twice as wide as the original. The east approach span (opposite bottom) awaits installation.
scrap yard. The first truss to be installed was the approach span on the east bank. It was placed onto steel rails and slid into place after the old bridge was removed, with its east end on land and the opposite end on a pier in the river. Installation of the remaining spans is expected to be completed next summer . —ALEXMAYES
Infrastructure Improvements: Not Only in the West
BNSF’S MISSISSIPPI BRIDGE PROJECT is the rule rather than the exception in today’s world of railroading. As heavier and faster trains proliferate many roads, both freight and passenger haulers, are spending significant sums on infrastructure. One example is CSX Transportation, which began the replacement of its 1920s-era deck truss bridge across the Mohawk River at Hoffmans, N.Y. (left), in Octo- ber. The railroad suspended all trains between Selkirk Yard and the west at 5:00 a.m. on Sunday, October 23 and resumed operations 24 hours later in order to install the first two replacement spans at the east end of the double-track bridge. The new deck girders were con- structed in the field in the foreground and lifted onto barges which were used to float them into place after the original spans were removed. The work was to have been done over the Labor Day weekend, but the nor- mally placid Mohawk was at flood stage due to precipitation from Hur- ricane Irene and the work site was under water. The bridge was built in 1923 by the New York Central as part of the 28-mile Castleton Cutoff,
which moved freight traffic off the busy, steeply graded route between Albany and Schenectady in favor of a lower grade, freight-only line whose operational center was a new classification yard in the Albany suburb of Selkirk. At the other end of the Cutoff, soaring above the Hud- son River, stands the monumental Alfred H. Smith Memorial Bridge. Also in the Northeast, Amtrak shut down its Northeast Corridor be-
tween Boston and New Haven, Conn., between 4:00 p.m. on Saturday, November 5 and noon the following day to replace the East and West Harbor bridges in Stonington, Conn. The short, double-track girder bridges provide passage for vessels between the upper and lower sec- tions of the harbor, although they will not clear sailboats. Amtrak’s biggest bridge project at the moment is the replacement of the double-track rolling lift bridge built in 1907 over the Niantic River near Lyme, Conn. The new bridge is being erected 58 feet south of the original to allow rail operations to continue during construction. In November 2011, the project was on pace for completion in 2013. —WALT LANKENAU
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