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NS, New York break ground on ex-Erie Portageville Bridge replacement
3 million in design cost? I should have been more involved in drafting back in high school!
They should save the old trestle as a bike-and-hiking path, to allow “Rails-to-Trails” Yuppie loons and assorted NIMBYs to jump off.
It would be a great place to get some good pics, but I doubt they leave the old one.
Mr. Hays, now that’s funny
Good one Bill, now I know why I love to go to Montana.
Make note that it’s only single track bridge…short-sighted if you ask me, but then some would ask why would you overbuild if there isn’t sufficient traffic to warrant a double track bridge now. It’s called future forcasting, which means you have to have some long-term strategy to grow business to warrant that double track structure…but there’s no on alive today that even thinks that way.
All the details are here: https://www.arema.org/files/library/2013_Conference_Proceedings/Desgin_of_New_Portageville_Bridge.pdf
Apparently the park didn’t want the old bridge to remain. There is no reason to spend this much on a fancy railroad bridge when the existing is ugly as heck. I couldn’t find in the design details how long the new bridge is supposed to last… I wonder if it will be 120 years?
Going off what Mr. Hays said, it actually would make a really nice trail bridge, and would be come a nice place to watch the trains.
We already have a really nice trail bridge where you can watch trains. It is called Poughkeepsie. It is the most popular state park site in the state. TM
We have a public private partnership going here to improve safety and economic development in the state of NY. Good for railroads,too. And we have to hear from “Billy” from Montana spouting his latest tired gag lines. My advice? Don’t quit your day job. And if it’s been a decade or more since you stopped being a contributor to society, more advice. Don’t go away mad, just go away.
Gerald: that bridge was never double track, even in Erie days. It was a lot busier then. Even in EL times, there could be a couple of dozen trains over it in 24 hours. After CR took over, there might have been 6 in the early days before stacks started on the Tier in the mid 80’s; after that, til CR rerouted most of the stack trains over the Chicago Line, there might have been a dozen trains on a good day. With good dispatching, NS can run the traffic levels they now have, or might anticipate, without a two track bridge there. That line is never going to be the Transcon. (Formerly an Endicott resident).
A shame that the old bridge can’t be kept as a recreational/historic project. It would be a good way to keep hikers and bikers off of the new bridge. Look at the crowds that Kinzua drew until the tornado wrecked it.
That is a chump-change little project to put of for 140 years while trains dare devil over a bottomless gorge at 10 MPH. New York couldn’t scrape up 17 million dollars? What is wrong with that state?