Adding a second track up to a gantleted bridge would certainly require UP to widen their ROW in beautiful downtown Richmond; I have no idea if the local gov’t and residents are amenable, but I don’t see Beverly Hills real estate prices here.
BTW here are some recent pics taken of the bridge repair work.
UP just posted an update a moment ago. The heavy rains received in late May and June in Texas caused many subdivisions to experience outages. One outage from that weather system remains; a bridge over the Brazos River on the Glidden subdivision experienced extensive damage. This route, between Houston and San Antonio, is under repair and is expected to be out of service for up to two more weeks. Traffic that would normally traverse this bridge is being re-routed, and customers should expect delays of up to 24 hours. The Ennis subdivision, which is in the southeast part of the Dallas-Ft. Worth metro area, was taken out of service on Monday and re-opened this morning. We expect to work through the backlog of traffic within the next 48 hours. Customers with traffic in the area should anticipate short-term delays. More rain is forecast through parts of the Southern Plains over the next 48 hours. We will continue to monitor weather conditions and have resources staged to allow a quick response to any weather-related outages. We appreciate your business. Please contact the National Customer Service Center or your Union Pacific representative with any questions.
This is just a WAG and if more pictures of the work becomes available will alter post accordingly.
It appears that there “may” be a beam of some kind that is extending over bents to the bridge pier. Could it be that this beam will allow the truss to be jacked up and a new pier built to support the truss section ? The only problem would be can the present bents & piles support all the weight of that beam ? Maybe a beam is long enough to place no load on the bents.
They stabilized the approach spans then installed a box beam from the approach span to the stable pier. That allowed them to support the bridge from the box beam and they can remove or repair the damaged pier as required, since it no longer supports anything. When the pier is repaired, they lower the steel truss down on the new pier, remove the box beam, replace the span between the steel bridge and the concrete approach , replace the rail and are back in business.
Pulling dirt out of pipes driven for new piers. The pipes will then be filled with concrete.
Clam shell device is lowered by crane down the inside of the pipe to dig out the dirt/mud.
I am not sure if I am the only on not able to see the linked photos …
Here are some others, not sure if it is open, I apologize in advance.
https://groups.yahoo.com/neo/groups/RailSpot/attachments/342441047;_ylc=X3oDMTJwamgxOW9qBF9TAzk3MzU5NzE0BGdycElkAzEzMDgxMARncnBzcElkAzE3MDYwNDMwMDQEc2VjA2F0dGFjaG1lbnQEc2xrA3ZpZXdPbldlYgRzdGltZQMxNDY1OTYyMDU1
It looks like they have raised the sunken pier and have leveled the bridge.
Can you see anything in this thread?
http://www.trainboard.com/highball/index.php?threads/rebuilding-the-brazos-river-bridge.95014/
Yes … Thank you … Nice Modeling Job!!
Looks like the bridge is back in service, according to the Yahoo group.
Uncnfirmed report that bridge has been closed due to additional settling of bents. 2 weeks to fix ?
EDIT/// Underlined may be incorrect see next post.
Still unable to confirm but seems that another support probably pilings and not pier is settling.
“Bents” are inherently pilings, aren’t they? I’ve never seen the term used to refer to anything else.
I haven’t been able to make a trip out to see the bridge yet, but the reports I’ve heard are that the new piers UP built (to replace the failed pier) have started to sink as well.
Apparently UP is now bringing back cranes and other equipment to the bridge site to prepare to work on the second round of repairs, but in the meantime they are still running some freight trains over the bridge at a 10 mph speed restriction (So I assume the sinking isn’t too bad, yet).
However, both Sunset Limited #1 & #2 have returned to their detour over the BNSF via Alvin to get to Houston and a number of freight trains are detouring as well. Also, today the Ringling, Barnum, & Bailey circus train came through and used the same BNSF detour to avoid the bridge.
-Chris
Still in August some kind of work still going on… Cranes still at work on barges, lot a workers around seems like 24hrs a day. Possibly still working on piers, etc. but there is train traffic passing.
can we guess that UP is holding its breath that the Brazos will not flood and cause more damage to the bridge with this latest low pressure rains ?