28 hour replacement of the Santa Fe Trestle over Denton Creek north of Justin, TX

(Satellite)

The trees hide over half of the 600' (183m) trestle.

Street View, Dec 2024

BNSF Railway 1:00 video (source) @ 0:00

In just 28 hours, BNSF crews safely demolished an 85-year-old wooden trestle bridge and built its 600-foot steel-and-concrete replacement north of Justin, Texas. More than 40 team members worked around the clock to ensure the new structure was ready for service. After months of planning, teamwork and engineering precision, everything came together in a tightly choreographed operation that showcased the pride of railroading.

See a lightning-fast timelapse video of 28 hours of work condensed to one minute at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HfknlgO4-Pw.

[Some comments observed that they had already driven all of the steel piles through the old deck structure and had cut them to length.]

Here we can see a couple of the new steel-pile bents.

@ 0:10

The small precast concrete structures to the right of the excavators would be the pier caps. The other structures are half of a span.

@ 0:19

It looks like they used juice (hydraulic) cranes for the pier caps and lattice cranes for the spans.

@ 0:21

Here a half-span is being slewed into place.

0:23

The length of the bridge is needed to pass the Denton Creek when there are rains.

@ 0:36

That tamper has his target out, so he is probably close to a final pass.

@ 0:47

The apparatus hanging out of the rear of the truck is an arc welder. The are welding the joints between track sections. The sections are two rails with their ties that have been preassembled so that they can be pulled into place after the spans have been built.

@ 0:49

After the welding, they did more tamping. I wonder if they also used a dynamic stabilizer to allow track speed after they were done. And I wonder what the track speed was before and after the replacement. Tracks on stone ballast should support a lot higher speed limit.

@ 0:53

I guess they did not use a stabilizer because this Amtrak train is creeping over the bridge.

@ 0:53

About a third of the construction time was dumping ballast and doing tamper passes.

1:00 video @ 0:39
Timelapse of BNSF bridge replacement! 28 hours of work in 1 minute

There is a parallel route, so detours during the outage would have been rather easy.

BNSF via Dennis DeBruler

1905(Page Design!)+1933 3rd Street (Lefty O'Doul) Bridges over China Basin in San Francisco, CA

1905: (Archived Bridge Hunter; Bridge Hunter)

1933:  (Archived Bridge Hunter; Bridge Hunter; Historic Bridges; Satellite)

Boat View, Nov 2014

1905 Page Design Bridge

BridgeHunter_1905
"A bascule bridge is a Page type designed by John W Page he worked with Shnable and Strauss on Trunnion bascule bridges, few of the types were constructed."

The Page design was indeed rare. Because the Monon Bridge was illegally scrapped, the GM&O Bridge is the only one left in the USA.

BridgeHunter_1905 and Bridges Now and Then posted
Looking south at San Francisco's Third Street Bridge, September 17, 1921. (Horace Chaffee, photographer/SF Department of Public Works)

1938 Straus Heel Trunnion Bridge

Street View, Mar 2025

lll

Bridges Now and Then posted
San Francisco's Third Street Bridge, May 6, 1933. (OpenSFHistory)

Kenneth Dotson commented on the above post
Working great for 92 years and counting. Not even affected by the '89 quake.

Kenneth Dotson commented on the above post

2018 Photo by Geoff Hubbs from AT&T Park via BridgeHunter_1933

HistoricBridges
"This particular example is unusual because it has a roadway that not only occupies the space between truss lines, but also has a roadway that is cantilevered out from the western truss line."

sfpublicworks

When I saw the Santa Fe sign, I checked out the railroad activity in this area. SP was on the northwest side, and Santa Fe was on the southeast side.

1950/50 San Francisco North @ 24,000

But when this bridge was built, it did accommodate steam locomotives. Note that the cantilevered road was added later.

 BridgeHunter_1933, Credit San Francisco History Center, SF Public Library
Bridge opening May 12, 1933

1876 SP+Santa Fe Tehachapi Loop and 1918 Tunnel #10

Loop: (Satellite)

#10: (Satellite)

TripAdvisor
Tehachapi Loop

I Love Trains posted

The Amazing Tehachapi Loop ⬇️ 🙌

https://trainfanatics.com/the-amazing-tehachapi-loop/

I Love Trains posted

Birdseye View Of The Tehachapi Loop ➰ 🙌 ⬇️

https://trainfanatics.com/birdseye-view-of-the-tehachapi.../

The grade is 2% and an average of 40 trains a day travel through the loop. "Trains of 4000 feet in length or longer pass under themselves as they go through the loop!"

TripAdvisor
Tunnel 10 at Tehachapi Loop - Picture of Tehachapi Loop

The portal has a build date of 1918. [zyxcreative]

I'm not surprised there was a stringlined derailment because a light freight car was placed before a heavy load. But what caught my eye is that a well car was able to flip over a locomotive. Some comments indicate that the locomotives were mid-train helpers. The S-curve didn't help.

Locomotive Trails posted

String lined train derailment Burlington Northern Santa Fe train in Tehachapi.

📸 Amy Miller 

1966/67 Keene Quad @ 24,000

This source taught me that Tunnel #10 was the one east of the loop. And the S-curve on the topo map is consistent with the above photos.

svchistory, c1878

BNSF/Santa Fe and I-35 Bridges over Red River near Gainesville, TX

Railroad: (Satellite)

I-35: (Satellite)

 

A June 2015 flood gives us a view of both bridges.

3:55 video @ 0:41

Street View, Aug 2024

Because of the trusses, we can see that two-thirds of the railroad bridge is over a tree-filled floodplain.

Satellite

This view makes it obvious that the girders for this bridge are made with steel instead of concrete. One generally does not see solid concrete fill between the columns of a pier. These piers were built exceptionally strong to withstand floods.

Street View, May 2023

They are spending $480m to build the bridges needed to add more lanes to I-35. [news9] (Why can't we get money to add more lanes to I-65 between Indianapolis and Chicagoland?) This is a Feb 12, 2025 view.

EchoSky Aerials

May 2025 Flood

May 4, 2025: I wonder where the crane went. I was expecting to see it up on the higher ground. If they have dug some cofferdams for some piers, they are full of water. It looks like at least some of the temporary trestle is intact because that is probably what is collecting the river debris.

0:37 video @ 0:04

"Dirt work on new approaches is well underway, but rising waters have damaged construction equipment left in the riverbed." [RoadsBridges] 

This looks like the same video and it provides a capture date of May 3, 2025.

Facebook Reel
EchoSky, LCC posted

 

May 7, 2025:

Storm Chaser Jordan Hall posted 1:58 video

Red River continues to flood near the I-35 Bridge on the Texas/Oklahoma border.

The flood gauge has come back down to 26 feet from the 38 it was flowing at 2 days ago. Looks like the bridge project was also destroyed.

Robyn Walters: normally it is just a thin line of water .

modis
May 6, 2025 - Flooding on the Red River and Lake Texoma

noaa
At 41.5', the floodwaters reach the low chord of the I-35 bridge.
The 2015 flood shown at the top of these notes was the record flood of 42.05'.

BNSF/Santa Fe Bridge over Kansas River in Topeka, KS

(Archived Bridge Hunter; Satellite)

The Rock Island Bridge also suffered flood damage.

Bob Finan posted

Posted in our Group six years ago by Larry Broadbent - regarding the 1951 Kaw River Flood in Topeka, Kansas…

(During the summer of 1951, heavy rainfall in the Kaw River basin caused extensive flooding. Some areas received 16 inches of rain from July 9-13. As the crest of the floodwaters rapidly moved down the river, the cities of Manhattan, Topeka and Lawrence suffered severe damage.)

“…Using both photographic evidence and information from a journal kept by William A. Gibson, Sr., a Santa Fe employee in Topeka, identification is possible for nine of the ten engines used on the bridge during the 1951 flood in Topeka.  Going from south to north, and with an asterisk indicating as to which three engines went into the river, the locomotives in which Santa Fe pinned its hopes for saving the bridge were: 3164 (2-8-2, 3163 (2-8—2), 1083 (2-6-2), *4076 (2-8-2), *3167 (2-8-2), *1035 (2-6-2), 3270 (2-8-2), 4039 (2-8-2), 3195 (2-8-2) and unknown but had the 4085 coal tender attached.  The locomotive 4085 locomotive was converted to an oil burner prior to 1951 , and was still in service at the time of the flood…”

3D Satellite

Street View

Dylan Edwards Flickr, License: Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike (CC BY-NC-SA)
This area is in the planning stages of becoming Topeka's Riverfront Park.
[Currently, it is rip-rap on the side of a levee on which River Road is built.]

Anonymous comment on Bridge Hunter:

In past years I did much research on the 1951 flood. The spans in the river were collapsed the evening of July 14th, 1951. This bridge was built in 1903 to replace a bridge that was completely destroyed in that flood. In fact, all bridges over the Kansas river were destroyed in the flood of 1903 with the exception of the 1900 built MoPac bridge in Kansas City, which still stands today and is in use. If you search historic images and special collections, aerial photographs exist of this bridge swamped in the July 14th flood waters with weighted railcars and locomotives parked on it in effort to weigh it down. The following morning, additional ones were taken and the center spans are missing. The paper in Topeka published an article too that day I'd read with photos detailing how this bridge and its companion AT&SF; bridge downstream about a 1/2 mile both lost center spans and all the locomotives just hours apart when the water was at maximum discharge levels.

AT&SF; pieced their bridge back together with different span types and one of them is clearly shorter as well. Rock Island rebuilt this bridge with identical spans (as you pointed out). Much like ATSF, RI left the damaged spans and submerged locomotives in the river where they still remain. The Kaw is also not classified as a "navigable waterway" by the Coast Guard so removing those spans would be a waste of money, and we all know that railroads don't like spending that. RI however did go a step ahead of ATSF, and installed a flood jack system (the sheds atop those arches) and reinforce the piers on this bridge in years after. Three bridges in KC (one also owned by RI at the time) also have a flood jack system that were installed after the 1951 flood. These were most recently used in the flood of 1993.

In closing, I've never seen any photos or info on this bridge's predecessor, but I can say that the spans in the river were built in 1903 with the bridge and not from an earlier one. If looked at in person (from Topeka Blvd) and google earth, it is clear they are Warren trusses as is the rest of the bridge. If I had to guess I'd say the first one was probably an old lattice truss similar to the 1899 Blue River bridge in Manhattan or perhaps even a wood pile structure. Whichever the case, the 1903 flood was much less severe in comparison to '51 or '93, so it was pretty weak to have been completely wiped out. Sorry to ramble on, wanted to share at least what I knew on the subject....... :-)

1923 BNSF/Santa Fe Dumas Bridge over Des Moines River near Argyle, IA

(Archived Bridge Hunter; no Historic Bridges; Satellite)

MP Rail Photography posted

Amtrak number 4, the Southwest Chief, crosses over the Des Moines River as it heads eastbound on the BNSF Marceline Subdivision.

August 31, 2024

Revere, Missouri

Power:

AMTK 60 - P42DC

Terry Holt: that's at Dumas the bridge is what East enders called it. Revere is west of there. If it was on time probably around 1015am due in at Ft. Madison around 1055 or so Blind Note trying to figure out where you were standing when you shot this it's perfect!! you must have walked in on south side of tracks.

MP Rail Photography: Terry Holt, I used my drone!

Marty Bernard posted
BNSF EMD GP60 8705 built May 1988 as ATSF GP60 4005 and seen on the BNSF Dumas Bridge over the Des Moines River near Argile, IA Nov. 6, 1999. Bill Kuba photo, Iowa Chapter NRHS Collection

MP Rail Photography posted

BNSF hotshot Z-LACNYC, an interchange with NS in Chicago, crosses the Des Moines River with four GEs and an EMD.

August 31, 2024

Revere, Missouri

Power:

BNSF 8151 - ES44D4

BNSF 7025 - ES44C4

BNSF 6583 - ES44C4

BNSF 5427 - C44-9W

BNSF 9128 - SD70ACe

MP Rail Photography posted

A Union Pacific priority intermodal train, running as F-GCIG4, crosses over the Des Moines River as it heads eastbound on the BNSF Marceline Subdivision.

August 31, 2024

Revere, Missouri

Power:

UP 6967 - SD70ACe

UP 5277 - AC45CCTE

UP 6267 - AC44CW

UP 8101 - AC45CCTE

UP 7259 - AC44CW

Rodney Harvey Flickr

Dumas Trainbridge

I got up yesterday morning way before sunrise to make my up to the most rugged and remote corner of our Clark County to an old railroad ghost town called Dumas. Population zero now. Only one house standing. A few cellars and foundations and a tunnel to drive under the train tracks. Sometimes inacessible. Dumas was born around 1880 when the railroad came through. History has it that some of the stranger happenings generate from this area. This is the train bridge where trains leaving Iowa cross the Des Moines River to start probable short trip through Clark County at 70 mph.

www.rodneyharveyphotography.com/

I used this map to determine where the Santa Fe crossed the Des Moines River.

1958/68 Burling Quad @ 250,000