Brightline+FEC over Turkey Creek in Palm Bay, FL

(no Bridge Hunter; Satellite)

These notes show the construction of the second bridge for a second track.

Street View, Sep 2022

The blue yellow and blue girders above are for the temporary work trestle. The crane is reaching over the current right-of-way. This is what the bridge normally looks like.

Street View, May 2021

I was going to simply add this as a bonus to the Sebastian river notes. But then I noticed that this one was the last girder for the whole Brightline project. But more significantly, I noticed the mix of using steel and concrete girders.

safe_image for Brightline Construction: Final Girder Installation at Turkey Creek - January 20, 2023
This GoBrightline construction update looks at the installation of the final girder at the Turkey Creek bridge in Palm Bay, FL. In addition to being the final girder at this bridge, it is also the last of 108 total girders required as part of Brightline's Orlando expansion. 

The Roaming Railfan confirmed that a steel beam is used to span the navigation channel while concrete beams are used for the other spans. This taught me that steel beams are stronger than concrete beams. Not only is the steel beam longer, it is not as deep. But I'm sure steel is more expensive or we would never see the use of concrete beams.

8:08 video @ 0:00

This was the satellite image I accessed. I was confused because it looks like there already is a second bridge.

Satellite

So I fired up Google Earth. The above image was taken Jan 2021. This later image shows that they evidently removed a steel bridge to replace it with this new bridge.

Google Earth, Jan 2022