Note that almost every photo of trackside structures and bridges are covered with rust. The recent issue of TRAINS has a pic of the rusted catinary. Why are the railroads not painting the equipment? This does not present a very good image of a good corporate citizen. The only paint seems to be from the graffitti “artists” which is another subject.
Bottom line - it costs money.
As long as the structure does its job in a satisfactory manner (like passes bridge inspections), it makes little difference to the railroad what it looks like. And many old bridges were so over-engineered that they’ll last near forever regardless.
There is Cor-Ten steel, but I don’t know where it’s used these days.
It’s all about functionality, appearance matters little to people other than railfans or some overzealous marketing types. Words such as “we can’t ship our stuff with that railroad because their bridges are rusty” have never been spoken. Same with graffiti… it looks like hell, but it doesn’t affect performance one iota…
FIRST: Rust or graffitti have no bearing on the structural integrity of most railroad bridges. They are inspected more often and more rigorously than most highway bridges under FRA rule (agencies like light rail under FTA guidance are a different story, witness Washington, Baltimore and Chicago…but you have singled out freight common carriers). The ratings, bridge maintenance plans and inspections are much more involved and rigorous. If you want to be scared or concerned - focus in on your local highway infrastructure, it’s more likely to fail.
SECOND: Most of the complaining comes from local politicians trying to deflect attention from their own shortcomings by trying to get into the railroad’s business. if you look back in the forum, you will find threads about bridges at Covington, KY (CSX); Toledo, OH (NS); Blissfield MI (Shortline ABDN) and Philadelphia (Transit) all that had unqualified individuals (busybodies without a clue) fraudulently claiming there’s a problem. The graffitti is largely because of the politician’s “finer citizens” being out of control and the local PD unwilling to deal with the issue.
THIRD: Painting operations are not cheap and don’t really accomplish that much. Railroad claim agents hate 'em because of all the frivolous claims.
(tree: watched erection of a pre-rusted railroad bridge pair earlier this week in San Diego over the Mission River and another one for the Indiana RR last year…fairly common anymore)
Until the locals clean up their act, don’t expect any reciprocal action by the railroads. They’ve heard this sad story too often.
Why not more bridges painted like the famous Enid Can Opener and painting “Stupid Trucker Zone Ahead” on the pavement?
Back in the “good old days” railroads would advertise by placing their nameplate on bridges, just as they put their name and slogan on freight cars; and because it was advertising, they kept them looking good.
Some of the legacy carriers naming still exist on bridges in my travels - all well faded and only meaningful to those that know what they are looking for.
Present day carriers don’t seem to want to publicize their existance.
Rust has always influence on structural integrity as it lets steel sections shrink, but over a very long time within legal limits. Often steel bridges are constructed with larger steel sections than the structural design asked for to provide for some rusting.
As someone said before many of the old bridges were overdesigned, if for rusting or looking forward to future higher loads or just so I can’t say. But the effect is the same.
At some point in the lifetime of a bridge the railroads have to decide if to build a replacement or start with corrosion protection. As many of the railroad bridges are quite old they are nearing the end of their lifespan anyway so the decision is easy.
Regards, Volker
Painting is cheap. Disposing of the paint chips is expensive.
I’ve always thought of the overengineered thing as a result of the lack of sophistication of their design computations. Rather than design specifically to use, as occurs today using computer modelling, they threw in a significant margin of safety.
Why can’t the highway departments put up a warning apparatus sort of thing a couple hundred yards back on the highway? For example, in the case of the bridge show, put an 8” steel I-beam above the highway at 11’-4” above the pavement. Any truck that hits it would likely tear up the top of a trailer and damage the I-beam. Wouldn’t that be a whole lot better than hitting a bridge at speed, probably destroying a truck and trailer and possible doing $1 million damage to the bridge?
In the interest of awareness and public relations, they could put a sign above the I-beam that reads: “(Your town/state here) welcomes America’s most attentive truckers. Please have your insurance information readily accessible.” That way they’d have a nice backdrop for the news photos and insure that your bridge got some national internet exposure.
We have a bridge over the interstate here that has been hit hard at least 6 times. I recall 2 of those times they had to close lanes on the interstate to do repair work, once for several months. I believe the owners and insurance carriers of at least 6 trucking firms would have pre
Larry is probably right. South Shore’s recently replaced overpass over NS and Torrence Avenue lasted over 100 years and looked like it could handle heavier loads than it got. I can also remember it being repainted in the early 1960’s (orange primer really sticks in your memory) and never again.
In a weird sort of way, rust is given a bad name. Does that make sense? When people see rust they equate it with something rotting into collapse. For example, most people freak out when rust appears around the wheel wells on their car; which by the way doesn’t mean the car is going to fall apart tomorrow.
I don’t think rust on solid steel structures is necessarily a sign of structural weakness. Think of it more like people who put unfinished wood siding on a house and let it weather out to a natural gray. There are exceptions of course. That’s why the rusty structure gets a periodic inspection. The house siding never gets inspected. Instead of fading to that beautiful, natural, silver-gray patina, it just turns several different shades of shaggy, rotten wood gray.
We had an incident in Dallas where an old single track railroad bridge was to be removed and replaced with a double track bridge for our light rail system. One night a dumb trucker helped us to remove the bridge. He was driving a dump truck and the bed was tilted into the dump position. Byby bridge and thanks to the stupid driver we had the bridge removed at no cost to us.
Speaking of Bridges vs, Trucks: As I recall, there was a bridge in the Greenville, High Point(?) areas of North Carolina. It seemed to be a’regular’ subject photo in TRAINS(?) as the object of another ‘hit’ by an unobservant Trucker. The problem was that it was on a road directly off a major highway, and offered a way to get into town. It had been originally, a Sou Rwy Structure, and then if became a child of NS. As the weight of freight cars escalated, it was found that the bridge ‘flexed’ under the load of passing trains, that downward deflexion effected the passing of regular 13’6" height road equipment; ultimately, the bridge seemed to be ‘hit’ more times that most boxers.
Repaving of roads is another reason that causes the passing truck traffic, to loose roof sheets, and other bits and pieces…MudChicken’s " Highway Bubba’s" can repave a road quickly, but replacing height signs, not so much. Contributing to the local economies, and truck repair shops. The Chicago area, also, being a prime example of that lack of any local jurisdictions ability’s in adjusting bridges, roads and signs. [:-^]
The structural analysis of trusses is not sophisticated. The Cremona diagram or the method of sections are known since the 1860s and are exact for statically determined trusses.
That doesn’t say that you are not right. I think we don’t know the reasons. Therefore I added “or just so”.
Regards, Volker
What’s gotten sophisticated is the determination of the materials needed. Nowadays, instead of just using, say, the next size larger beam, the computer determines that such and such a size will suffice, over a span of X, etc. The making of structural members (ie, the steel itself) has also gotten more sophisticated.
Seem to remember back in the eighties, some steel manufacturer put out a product that would deliberately form a coat of rust that acted as a protective much like a coat of paint. Anyone else remember anything about that?
Cor-Ten? I think it may actually go back before that.
Not only do I remember it, I used a similar product several weeks ago on my Jaguar. (It came from a little old man in Morristown, New Jersey, and he drove it in the winter … not much, but enough for an English car!)
There are actually two versions of this: one does the full conversion to a ‘paintlike coating’ and the other needs to be covered by a proper primed topcoat for weather resistance. They work, and are nifty for ‘completely rusty’ items if you have the funds to acquire them.
The problem is that they don’t penetrate well under adjacent areas of old paint or other contaminants, and it’s expensive to use ‘enough’ of them to convert scaly and structurally-incompetent surface rusting above the metal surface itself. Therefore you really need to get out the needle gun, sander, etc. to get the surface prepared, and then you have to deal with the old paint, rust chips and dust, etc. as well as the labor and equipment and time. And you still may not get full coverage into the seams and cracks in the structure, or ‘convert’ problems with rivets or welded areas.
Sam is referring to the Greensboro-High Point area; Greenville is well east of that area.