You are correct…In fact, the structure I related to in my previous post is at a connection {joint}, in the road surface on the bridge and the salt {brine}, has leaked down onto the ends of the prestressed horizonal beam ends I spoke of, and the result is the concrete has come off the beam ends to the point exposing the re-bar and it too is all rusted…and with just a half a foot of the beam resting on it’s support…
And of course, not much chance of salt getting on a RR bridge in like amounts.
That “someone riding under this bridge” just happened to be an engineer in the Rock Island B&B department. Kind of a “expert witness” to have happen on the scene! Scott
UP had a bridge collapse very similar to the Pallisades NV collapse a few years ago (may 05) in North Central ILL at Galt, IL (near Sterling) on the old C&NW line. Train derailed and took out a through truss bridge. UP built a temp shoo-fly around it until the double track main was restored.
jscott/ Scott is exactly right - as I recall, the fellow’s name was Hernan DeSoto, or similar. The whole episode was written up in layman’s language in an article in Trains by Ed King as one of his ‘trials and tribulations’ as Manager of Suburban Services (or a similar title) for the Rock Island back then. See -
Disaster du jour and other stories
Trains, June 1986 page 30
Three years, Manager of Suburban Operations
( COMMUTER, “KING, ED”, RI, TRN )
It happened on a bitter cold morning in January, as I recall. What happened is that the pier or column cracked extensively - almost broke - where a brace was welded into it. The investigation resulted in the documentation of a phenomenon known as ‘lamellar tearing’, which often results from the high heat of welding and subsequent cooling stresses, perpendicular to the main axis of a member, among other causes. Some of the members may have had to have been replaced - temporary repairs included shoring and cribbing as reinforcement. As I recall, some of the permanent repairs involved rewelding the connection, and even drilling a hole in the main member to act as a ‘stop’ in the event the crack r
Los Angeles Times
September 23, 1993
Amtrak Train Derails in Bayou, Killing 44
Sunset Limited from L.A. plunges off bridge in Alabama. A barge may have rammed into trestle.
J. MICHAEL KENNEDY and ERIC HARRISON, TIMES STAFF WRITERS
SARALAND, Ala. — The Amtrak Sunset Limited from Los Angeles to Miami with 206 people aboard hurtled off an aging trestle early Wednesday and plunged like a steel stone into a foggy Alabama bayou, killing 44 and leaving at least three others trapped in wreckage that sank into an ink-black swamp crawling with snakes and alligators.
A locomotive erupted into flames, burning its crew. Fire spread to the wood-and-steel trestle. One of the coach cars hung over the edge of the 84-year-old structure but did not fall. Riders, many of them asleep when the train derailed at 2:47 a.m. local time, screamed and scrambled through the wreckage. Several rescued others, including a 3-year-old boy.
The FBI said a tugboat pushing six barges loaded with concrete and coal might have rammed and weakened the trestle shortly before the Sunset Limited arrived. “One of those barges has a big dent in it,” said special agent Chuck Archer in Mobile, Ala. He said concrete had been broken away from the foundation of the trestle and that pieces of concrete were found on the barge.
Amtrak said it was the worst train wreck in its history. The toll could eclipse the cumulative total of 48 people killed in all crashes on Amtrak since it was created 23 years ago to run the nation’s long-distance passenger trains. Alabama Gov. Jim Folsom, who flew over the bayou as smoke and steam rose from the wreckage, said, “It was the most terrible sight I have ever witnessed.”
About 40 people on the train when it crashed had boarded in Los Angeles, an Amtrak official said. There was no immediate word on whether any of them were among the fatalities. Authorities said they did not expect to complete a list of the dead before today. They said most of the victims we
Some of these questions seem to assume that UP was actually operating the train that derailed. I don’t recall all of the circumstances of this incident, so I may be mistaken, but I don’t think the train was being operated by UP. The reason it might seem to have been a UP train is because of the nature of the interline
The “somebody” was a CRI&P bridge engineer who understood the significance of what he saw, and reported it as soon as could reach a telephone (this was before cell phones).
I’ve remembered a pair of bridge failures in Northern Idaho.
During April 2006 part of the former Milwaukee Road pile trestle at Benewah gave way under a St. Maries River crane. It was repaired more than a year later.
http://www.rrpicturearchives.net/srchThumbs.aspx?srch=benewah&search=Search
The other took place much sooner (early 1980s?) when a former Spokane International trestle collapsed under a Union Pacific train, at Bonners Ferry(?). I believe at the time a replacement trestle was almost ready beside the failed bridge, so the line was not closed for too long.
The Bonners Ferry collapse was on December 6, 1985. Fortunately, only eight cars on the rear of the train (which was cabooseless by then) fell in, so no locomotives or employees were lost. It was one of the few wooden through-truss railroad bridges still in existence. UP was already building a new plate girder bridge next to it; completion schedule was sped up and they had the last span and track panel laid down two days later. My photo of the wooden bridge pre-collapse was in the December 1987 Trains. A photo of the aftermath was in the April 1987 Trains.
A “handling carrier” arrangement is very similar to a “haulage” arrangement between two Class I roads, In a “haulage” arrangement. the “hauling” carrier actually provides the service, but does not appear in the pricing documents or in the waybill.
Absolutely not!!
Maybe I did not make it clear. According to the accident report UP originated the train (where ?). As the originating carrier they were responsible for initiating the overweight protocols for at least their operation. My question on that was why place 8 axels that close together when an idler car would have spread the load and not get close to UP cooper loading for any of their bridges.
Then it was definitely up to M&B ( and maybe the UP)* to verify that loads were not exceeded. Now the report stated that 2 different UP “WILD” reports had the load way over the rated load of the M&B bridge for 2 adjaecent cars (8 axels). The report was only factual since it was a FRA and not NTSB report. There was not any recommendation or even mention of idler cars which would have probably prevented this accident. ( $3.0M +) . Obviously M&B shuld have added idler flats.
? Can you explain that comment?
The rocket motors are made in Utah, near Salt Lake City.
Two more reports of boats on rivers damaging or destroying railroad bridges:
In 1978, I was taking the Floridian from Birmingham to Chicago, and while I was waiting for the train, we were told that a tow had hit the Southern bridge across the Tennessee at Decatur, Ala. Rather than wait for a full assessment of the damage and perhaps necessary repair, Amtrak chartered buses to ferry passengers between Birmingham and Nashville. I do not recall hearing, later, of necessary repair.
One of the roads that was absorbed into the East Tennessee Virginia and Georgia was built from Rome, Ga, and Meridian, Miss., by way of Anniston, Selma, Demopolis, and York, Ala. I do not remember just what year it was that a riverboat hit the bridge across the Tombigbee at Demopolis (I do not have the memory of resident of Benevola, Ala. who told me this), but the 6/15/31 timetable of the Southern shows a through train between Rome and Meridian (using the AGS between York and Meridian), and the next timetable I have (9/36) shows no service between Demopolis and McDowell (4.9 miles west of Demopolis). The Southern did not rebuild the bridge, but used the line from Marion Junction to Akron to handle traffic to York from Selma. Even this line, as well as the line from McDowell to York, is gone now.
There is a note to the Rome-York timetable–"Note: No train service betweenDemoplis and McDowell, Ala. Through passengers between Selma and Meridain handled between Marion Junction and Akron. See Tables 66 and 10. A passenger would really have to want to go from Selma to Meridian, since he had to take a mixed train at 5:00 am, and would wait in Akron from 8:40 until 10:40 for the Queen and Crescent to take him on to York and Meridian. Eastbound, he would leave Meridian on the local, #18, at 6:30 am, arrive in Akron at 8:43 am, leave on the mixed at 9:30
The Shuttle SRM’s are made in Alliant Techsystem’s plant in Promontory.
Question :: What is the route of the SRMs? UP - KCS - M&B - CSX - FEC? Could be the gulf coast route of CSX (L&N) could not take the overweight cars?
Would a fallen wood bridge genrally be replaced with a metal bridge? Do the railroads still build new wood bridges?
When KCS was rebuilding the “Macaroni LIne” between Rosenberg and Victoria, TX, they replaced the wooden trestles with concrete bridges; they did leave the existing wooden and iron structure over the Lavaca River.
Timber structures are still driven by railroads in places. (For that matter, there are still timber trestles/bridges still under US Highways and State Highways here in Colorado.) There are ways to stiffen bridges as well (eg steel caps and stringers or T-Rail under the ballast decks)…Shortlines probably more than Class 1’s, but the thinking that goes behind the decision(s) makes it interesting, usually centered around lifecycle economics, climate and tonnage.
Personal observation…NTSB findings seem to be swayed more by political winds from time to time.
I’m guessing that a timber bridge can be put in place faster than most steel or concrete bridges as a pile driver can drive a lot of piles in the time it takes to prepare foundations for a steel or concrete bridge. If conditions are such that a timber bridge will last more than 30 years, it wouldn’t take much of an initial costs savings for it to be cheaper in the long run to replace the bridge when needed.