Tuesday, November 5, 2019

MoW: trucks wrecking railroad overpasses

I was ignoring these posts concerning overpass bridge damage until I came across the post at the bottom as to how its fixed. I went back and found the posts that show the damage. I knew a barge could put big kinks in the tracks on a bridge. Given the number of overpasses that are in this country, it is really scary to learn that a truck can do comparable damage to a track.

Chuck Kulesa posted
Ok ...
Disp: how long ya think till i get my railroad back ...
EIC: Maybe 2
Disp: 2 hrs
EIC: No 2 FRIGGEN WEEKS
Disp: WHAH WHAH WHAH WHAH ...
Radio chatter: Emergency Responders needed at Disp. office ASAP ... Man Down Unresponsive ...
Joseph Wiseley Where is that at
Chuck Kulesa AC Line
Chuck Kulesa River Rd Joe ... i'm on the PTC platform and the Delair bridge is behind me ... my next door neighbor's idiot bro-in-law came barreling down River Rd in a dumpster truck with the pickup boom in the up position ... never slowed down and the road drops under the bridge ...
[Unfortunately, I have no idea where the AC Line and River Road are.]

Chuck Kulesa reposted
i don't think i posted this on Joe's page previously but if i did Joe can delete it ... Joe's post of the bridge strike had my brain thinking of this incident from last year ... trash container truck traveling with his boom up hit the bridge at speed ... tracks were oos for 3 weeks ... special multi axle hydraulic bridge jacks had to be brought down from up north to lift up the bridge girders and reseat them back on the bridge wall abutments ...
Chuck Kulesa the driver was my next door neighbor's bro-in-law ... spent 2 weeks in the hospital ... he's lucky he didn't snap his neck when the roof of his truck hit the underside of the bridge girder ... and he's still driving for Robinson Container ... go figure ... how he didn't lose his license let alone his job is amazing ...
Ramon Cancilleri Chuck, 65 K job openings in Over the road drivers!!! Can't afford to let anyone go!!!!
John Hicks I was there for that one! That was definitely one of the worst I’ve seen so far.

They sent me down there to run the loader for B&B to set new steel it was pretty beat up for sure.

Mike Sandau Really gotta build there underpasses DEEPER
Chuck Kulesa Mike in all reality there should be an overpass here ... the PRR Bridge Branch coming off the Delair Bridge between Philly and NJ was built early in the first decade of the 20th Century for Atlantic City train service ... if the road River Rd continued on profile it would've intersected the railroad at grade ...

the town and the railroad decidedly chose to undercut the hwy and go under ... the bridge can clear 14' 18 wheelers ... this was 2nd time the bridge was hit where the girders became dislodged ...

now after losing the bridge for 3 weeks you'd thing strike beams would've been installed on both sides to protect the rail structure .... noooooooo ... just as vunerable today as it was the day it got hit ...
Chuck Kulesa i worked the AC Line trackage (to Atlantic City) back in '86 when we rebuilt the line ... that same bridge in the photo was a mess ... the bridge girders were out of line back then from being hit in the 70s ... the TLM crews took measurements off the bridge girders for track centers but they couldn't figure out why the bridge wasn't lining up with the approaches ... they sent me up there to fix it with my crew ... after taking my measurements from the bridge girders and looking at the ends of the track ... Lining it up was a simple conclusion ... the bridge was out of line ... so I just pulled all the spikes on the bridge, ran the tamper through, lining, spiking and gaging every 5th tie as the tamper moved forward ... after we ran the tamper through lining it, we went back and set the approaches to match the bridge and respiked the bridge ... rechecked my measurements off the bridge girders for clearance because of the girders being out of line ... everything was good ...

Chuck Kulesa posted
there were a cpl of posts by myself and Joe about bridge strikes ... in my scenario of the River Rd bridge strike, the damage was so severe that the bridge girders were over 3ft out of alignement and lifted vertically off the concrete bridge structure close to 2ft ...
below is what was needed and used to lift the misaligned girder bridge up off the bridge abutment after the River Rd bridge strike ...
being there aren't many contractors (at least in NJ) who have these machines in their equipmwnt arsenal, they're usually not close to where they are needed ... the logistics of mobilizing these machines to a job site takes some planning, permits and time ... up to a week in some instances ...
the River Rd job required 2 remote controlled self propelled multi axle hy-jack bridge lifters to re-place the girder bridge back where it originally belonged ...
for those who missed my River Rd bridge strike post ... here it is ...
Chuck Kulesa it's a very tedious and precise procedure ... very time consuming ... iirc it took almost a week to get both girder bridges back in place ...
Andrew Filtz These pieces of equipment are not cheap to rent either.
Chuck Kulesa correct ... there only being a few contractors who own them ... they command a premium price ..

Markus Koltura Chuck Kulesa ah yeah I remember it then. Ca20 and all the new leg jobs couldn’t work
Chuck Kulesa Markus they worked when the bridge was put back temporarily after about 10 days ... they reversed on the bridge through PTC .. the main was out for 3 weeks ... and then they went back and did the Siding
Robert Bartlinski J super in Kearney NJ has them, we have used them 3 times in the last 2 years
Chuck Kulesa Robert these did come down from north jersey ... probably the same NJT contractor ... 3 times huh ... boy you guys hadda fun cpl years up there ...

Bonus: this one did sooo much damage that I'm saving it also.
John W. Coke posted
At least the red flags stayed in place!
Nadia Sokolowski Old photo. Lol. That’s the bridge strike in Midland that closed the loop bridge over I-20 for almost a year.

And this one shows that an overpass can be shoved completely off of its abutments.
Dirty Machines posted
Allen Delawski: Me Thinks It was tied Down Good...


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