Moving from BRIDGES to VIADUCTS, has anyone noticed the deterioration of former NYC concrete viaducts such as the one across the Miami River on the East side of Sidney Ohio. Conctete spalling off and I think I could see some rebar.
Regarding the Memphis I-40 bridge:
"The fired inspector had missed the crack in 2016, 2017, 2019 and 2020. Another inspector who had missed the crack in 2018 had never inspected that portion of the bridge before, and the department said he has been “verbally counselled” and will receive additional training.
The department’s report said the agency’s failure to adequately respond to employees concerned with the fired inspector’s job performance “perpetuated a culture where team members did not feel they had the authority or support to question a lead inspector’s procedures or thoroughness.”"
(1) Railroad steel bridges are inspected at least once a year and the Cls. 1’s tend to look at them 2x or more.
(2) The FRA criteria always pretty rigid, has gotten tougher in the last 5 years, especially on how they look at existing years.
(3) It’s the Cls 3 and the industrials you need to be concerned about. Operating people with no engineering background, empty coffers/ slim margins and generally assuming former class 1 lines without all the documentation (lawyers love to hide the stuff, new railroads frequently fail to require the stuff at hand-over and FRA/STB do not require it or demand it. Your FRA Bridge Plan (everybody is supposed to have one by now) or lack of one may shut you down. …I’m more concerned about rickety small town or backwards counties than the rail bridges.
(4) What Cooper’s Rating did the bridge start out with? E-What? If you are less than E-63, you may have bought big liability trouble. Traffic on the line?
(5) Reinforced concrete spalling is a concern like ELiner is talking about. Wonder if that Big4 bridge is about to get a visit from Osmose’s concrete epoxy folks et al? ($$$$)…Uncle Pete and BNSF both have had issues in Iowa lately. (and some of the old CB&Q and M&StL bridges were funky to start with.
(6) Wonder how long it will be before some PSR financial wunderkind who never gets his shoes dirty and doesn’t wear steel toed boots finds himself liable for some incident due to his decisions? (and can’t pawn off the blame on M/W being at fault because people aren’t there anymore)… FRA is investigating.
(7) Still an awful lot of timber structures out there soldiering on.
Thanks MC, for separating the real from the many speculations that preceded you at this site. MC and his colleges deal with bridge issues every day.
There’s more than one steel-framed RR bridge around that is still painted “Atlantic Coast Line” or “ACL”. One is beside U.S. 84 between Quitman and Valdosta, GA, on the “Bow Line”. Not steel bridges, but there are still many concrete overpasses and panels in buildings with “Seaboard” (as in Air Line) cast into the concrete. Many of them have the year “1929” also cast into the concrete.
The totally amazing thing is that there are still timber trestles in existence in the 21st Century.
I guess it’s equally amazing that there are masonry viaducts and bridges in the 21st Century, too.
Some things just keep working.
Ed
Starucca (Pennsylvania bluestone) is still handling traffic as it has since around 1853.
The Lackawanna had a real winner in the concrete mix they used for bridges like Tunkahannock, etc.
I visited Nicholson a few years ago, and there’s evidence of spalling, but it’s so massive that a few chips aren’t going to have a major effect on it.
Replacing either with a “modern” structure would be cost prohibitive.
The same is true for most of the stone bridges built by the first railroads.
Remember, too, that there are a good many concrete coaling towers that are still there only by virtue of the fact that taking them down would be a monumental task.
Masonry has a much longer life span than does wood. The amazing thing is not that they exist in the 21st Century, its that they even got built in the 19th Century.
Two that I’m very familiar with is the ex-NYC one at Junction Yard in Detroit and the ex-PRR just north of Marion, OH where US23 crosses the tracks.
I’ve always suspected that the people who design and build such long term assets, have a degree of “this thing will out live all of us” mentality, where whatever happens after they are dead and gone is of little concern to them. (someone else’s problem)
Then, from a practical matter, if a bridge has an anticipated lifespan of 150 years, and its already 120 years old, the amount of money it’s owner is willing to spend on it might have some constraint. Just spend what is absolutely required, etc.
And then, there are differing priorities. Just because mine may differ from my neighbors does not mean either one of us is “right” vs “wrong”. But it’s a safe bet that when he’s trying to borrow against the equity in his home, he’s very likely to sic the code enforcement people on me if he feels my neglect is impacting the value of his home.
And I don’t see any valid reason why absentee owners (railroads) should be exempt from similar responsibility to their neighbors.
Here, they add surcharge penalties to the property tax bills to force negligent home owners to replace dilapidated and unsightly roofs, etc…and the penalties are stiff.
Years ago I suppose the railroads had some leverage due to the number of jobs they supported in each community they passed through. I suspect much of that leverage has evaporated in the communities those railroads only run-through now.
The public doesn’t care what RR bridges look like. They don’t even notice them. They’re just glad that it’s not a grade crossing where they have to wait 15 minutes for a land barge to go through.
The public that doesn’t live near a bridge, perhaps. While others have been quite outspoken.
https://cs.trains.com/trn/f/111/t/61873.aspx?page=1
I doubt that link will “light up”. Most likely you’ll have to copy and paste the address
While we are on the subject of the Hernando DeSoto bridge, a perhaps ominous point:
A very intensive review and redesign of the seismic response of this particular structure was done relatively recently. This included a downright fascinating implementation of ‘bridge shoes’ that self-restore from random lateral perturbations: there is a steel ‘saucer’ with a hardened sphere in it, and the non-fixed end of the truss rides on this with cable and attenuator connections.
Point is, major engineering work was done on that bridge comparatively recently, and for cracking ‘not to be observed’ from 2016 up to the date it was ‘noticed’ suggests that it might have originated in some of the remediation work, too ‘new’ for dangerous cracks to have propagated…
… how many other ‘recent replacement’ structures get full and expensive NDT yearly?
Let’s face it, rust brown kind of blends into the scenery.
I’d actually imagine that the public would complain about a bridge being painted a color that makes it stick out, including silver. OTOH, painting one in a local interest scheme (school colors?) might go over well.
The Roman aqueducts have hung around for awhile.
Maybe I’m at a disadvantage by not being from that select group of privileged members receiving special entitlements. [}:)] But your link doesn’t work any better than mine. [%-)]
( I never have been able to link to other posts in this messageboard)
To be fair, doesn’t every company look at lifespan and budgeting when spending lots of money on equipment or infrastructure?
There is a railroad bridge in our city that is painted mint green- continually. Our police force does an excellent job in keeping graffiti out. When some does appear, it’s a priority to paint it over right away. This particular bridge is in a rougher part of town and is a constant target for taggers, and is constantly getting more gallons of mint green applied.