Crystal Lake Junction: C&NW vs. C&NW

(Satellite)

The northwest/southeast route is one of C&NW's spokes out of Chicago. This one goes to Harvard, Janesville, Madison, and eventually Minneapolis+St. Paul. The north/south route is a branch that went north from Aurora along the Fox River and then on up into Wisconsin. This branch has been abandoned south of Crystal Lake and north of Richmond.

Sam Carlson posted
A begrimed C&NW 408 gets orders handed up at Crystal Lake (IL) Junction on August 1, 1980 - the final day of service up to Richmond, IL. This is the second to last train to Richmond; the last train will be along in about an hour.
Sam Carlson Modellers, take note of the "tower."
[The tower operator is holding a second hoop in his left hand. So a conductor must open a car door to grab his copy of the train orders.]

Sam Carlson posted
August 1, 1980. Crystal Lake Jct. The last all C&NW train to Richmond, leaving Crystal Lake Jct., crossing what I *think* is Crystal Lake Avenue, heading north.

The yellow line is the current UP-NW Metra service. I checked the satellite image. The tracks still go to Richmond to serve a chemical plant.

Metra1

The UP-NW service goes to Harvard, IL. In 1997, Motorola built a $100 million dollar campus in Harvard to design and build smartphones there. At its peak, the employment was 5,000 people. But the good times did not last. Google bought the Motorola phone business to get the cellphone patents and closed the campus in 2003. At the time of closing, there were 1,200 employees, 600 of which found work at other Motorola facilities. [nwherald] I can't find an economic driver as to why Metra has a secondary service to McHenry.

On Sundays, none of the trains originate from McHenry. And one of the trains starts at Crystal Lake instead of Harvard. On weekdays, three trains start from McHenry, all during the morning rush hour. Nine trains originate from Harvard. Of course most of the originations are during the morning rush hour, but the last origination is at 8:35pm. (The last train leaving Chicago is 12:30am and arrives at 2:20am.) 13 trains leave from Crystal Lake instead of Harvard or McHenry, the last one being 12:10am. I can include the Saturday originations verbatim. All of these trains stop at all of the other stops between Crystal Lake and Ogilvie Transportation Center (Chicago) except for Gladstone Park.

Metra2

Mark Llanuza posted
Were at Crystal Lake Jct in June 1981 with crews getting train order's to head up to McHenry line on the old Lake Geneva line .By 1981 commuter trains only went far north as McHenry IL .Frt train still went to Lake Geneva two times a week to Ringwood and Lake Geneva at the time of this photo i took.
Teresa Hawkins I'm glad we don't have to hoop orders up any more. This is a great picture!

Mark commented on his posting
Teresa Hawkins i think this is you last year throwing switch.
Teresa Hawkins Damn yes it is!!!

Mark Llanuza posted
Its Sept 1979 were at Crystal Lake Jct with northbound coming off the main line going onto the Lake Geneva branch line heading to Richmond IL with a afternoon rush hour train.
Scott Janz If there are so many cars, why did they stop going to lake Geneva?
Mark Llanuza Scott Janz this 11 car train most of the commuter's got off at Barrington and Arlington only about 35 people got off a McHenry and only about five or six got off a Ringwood and Richmond .On the last day of operations only three passenger's got off a Ringwood.
Thomas G. Morin Trains to Lake Geneva (now to McHenry) use the cutoff at Crystal Lake Jct to access and head north on the former Fox River Railroad. These trains exit the double track Harvard main line well before Walkup. As a side note, Once upon a time the Lake Geneva trains would use the Fox River Line all the way from Lake Como through Algonquin to Elgin and would then proceed to Chicago on the C&NW West Line.
Dennis DeBruler Thomas G. Morin, some of us have joined this group to learn about the C&NW. I did not know any of that, and I'm glad you provided the information.

Mark Llanuza posted
Its a beautiful Spring day 1980 after waiting for three commuter trains at Barrington Madison bound train 599 goes past Crystal Lake Jct with Six covered wagons.
Ray Weart This is where the line that went to Lake Geneva split off the mainline. Today that branch only goes to Mc Henry. And behind Mark is Crystal Lake Ave which was one of the very few whistle crossings at the time as it had no gates like most of the rest of the crossings did.
[If they had six locomotives pouring out that much smoke, they must have been still running some serious freight traffic.]

Mark Llanuza posted
[My understanding of the comments is that he is running "wrong main" because he is going to take the connector to McHentry branch so...]

Mark commented on his posting
He's going to take the wye for his train
[...that it can backup past the connector in the southeast quadrant and then head back in the reverse direction on the route he is on in the above photo.]
Andrew Gray Mark, what did the track that curved to the far left go to?? Can you tell where that is now or no.
Mark Kaspar Andrew, that leads { no longer } to the Bell Lumber yard.........

MoW: Ballast Cars and Aban/Marblehead/Carmeuse Lime Cement Company

(3D Satellite)

Marty Gatton posted

IHB hoppers with fresh paint and new ballast sit in a yard just west of the NS Calumet River Branch just north of 106th street

March 9 2018...4:30pm
Marty Gatton Shots taken from aside the 106th street bridge...
Arturo Gross That's the former Marblehead Lime site, the cars are sitting in a part of the plant that was recently dismantled.
Andy Irvine I spotted these cars in LaGrange Park around 3pm today heading north on the IHB.
Dennis DeBruler I've learned that the middle branch of Pennsy's South Chicago & Southern railroad is now the NS Calumet River Branch. http://industrialscenery.blogspot.com/.../prrs-south...

I'm saving the satellite image because, as Arturo mentioned, the part that made cement, including the long kilns and a big smokestack, has been removed. Just like Buzzi Unicem in Oglesby, IL, it looks like they retained the storage and distribution operations.

3D Satellite

Update: Tom Rutkowski posted photos of a Herzog ballast train where the cars have solar panels.
Kris Rumbut They have GPS and power hatches for romote operations I believe.
Brian R Bundy Ballast train. It dumps via satellite and computer at around 15mph top speed. Dumped a few of these.
(new window)



Video of a ballast train dumping at walking speed.

MoW: CSX/D&S overpass lost the fight with a truck

(Satellite)

D&S is the name in the 1928 RR Atlas. I saw that it stands for Durham and Southern because you can still read the name on the bridge in a Street View.

Joe Dockrill shared WRAL news report

My first reaction was how could a trailer do that. Normally the trailer gets smashed instead of moving the bridge span. Then I read in the WRAL report that "the rig was carrying a Komatsu motor grader." It was a hit-and-run; but they later found the driver. (The report gives the name, I decided not to repeat it.) Both the road and railroad is expected to be closed for weeks. CSX normally runs one or two trains a day over this route.

I guess it is the crossbar at the end of the span that is keeping that span from twisting off the abutment.

I started using Street View to find a clearence sign. But the first thing I saw was a sign indicating trucks should not be on this street. But, by the time a driver sees this sign, what is he supposed to do? There is no way to turn around. He could have at least slowed down. Given how far he pushed the bridge span, he must have been going pretty fast.

Street View

CSX/ACL Street Running in Tampa, FL to Hillsborough River Bridge

(Bridge Hunter, no Historic Bridges, 3D Satellite, 16 photos, Street View)

Photos concerning the bridge of the Hillsborough River have been moved to a previous post. This post now concentrates on the street running through Tampa.

This spur through town serves a tanker transloading facility, a chemical plant, Standard Concrete Products and Motiva Enterprises (a distributor of Shell and 76). It looks like some of the industry along the bay has already disappeared.

(new window)
(I don't understand why railfans have so much "just horn" time at the beginning of their videos. You can finally see the train at 2:18. There is a lot of horn blowing because the train is crossing a lot of streets in downtown Tampa. The city wants an exemption for the horn blowing, but it runs down the middle of Polk Street. I don't know if the train can control the traffic lights like the emergency vehicles can in Downers Grove, but there is still a matter of warning the cars that are driving on Polk Street that they might get run over. When I stayed in a hotel in downtown Atlanta, I would wake up in the wee hours of the morning because there was a crossing in an industrial part of town. And the engineer used no judgement as to how long a "long" blast needed to be. He leaned on that horn as if he was in the middle of the country approaching a blind crossing. If they won't give an exemption for a seldom used crossing in the guts of an industrial area, then they can't give one for street running in a downtown area.)


You can tell that it has rolled back just halfway. This bridge could go straight up. That is why the counterweights hang outside of the track girders.

Screenshot

The street running we hear at the beginning of the above video is down Polk Street. Here is a view taken from the Franklin Street crossing looking Westish. On the other side of that parking garage at the end of Polk is the location of the bridge.

20151222 7633

Then I turned around and took this view looking Eastish.

We then walked down Polk to the Marion Street crossing, and I again took pictures looking Westish and...

...Eastish. You can see that it runs several blocks through downtown. It leaves Polk Street at Jefferson Street.

(new window) (source)
Tampa! This is a hard catch! Only 2 trips a week!

And then YouTube will offer you other videos of Tampa street running.  This one shows it runs a lot of red lights.

Lattice Boom Mobile Cranes, e.g. Gottwald AK912

As the world's largest, the Liebherr LR 13000 crane has its own page.

VEMA's Gottwald AK912
[1985, 1200 ton]

Note the date of 1985. Back then the biggest mobile cranes using telescoping booms were probably pretty small. Even today's largest telescopic boom, Liebherr LTM 11200-9.1, is the same capacity as this old crane --- 1200 tons.

John W. Coke posted
Gottwald AMK 1000-103, until 2007 the heaviest lifting mobile crane in the world.

Arthur Overdijk posted
Gottwald AK-912-GT

Steve Robinson posted four photos with the comment: "GOTTWALD AK 912 GT."
Russell Johnson This was in the day when a big crane showed up to make a lift they actually got [stuff] out of the way and made it a priority. Now it’s just another day as you have 32 trucks at the gate waiting for them to move a bunch of scaffold or build a pad.

1

2

3

4

Back when the AK912 was being designed, TV's were still running on vacuum tubes. Not having a full grasp into the stress's and strengths of materials back in the day, just about every plate cut to go into it was a little more than was thought was needed, A 1000t mobile crane was a ground breaking achievement. They were extremely well built. Even in the early 80's it was thought that the capacity could top 1200t, nobody would dare stamp it.
Today with Rockwell hardness test, laser metallurgical testing, the type and content of a material can easily be assessed. With engineers knowing exactly what material's are where and its composition, the crane can be loaded into a computer and tested.
[search for "Lotsacrane" on dhsdiecast]

ale-heavylift

More specifications

The one owned by ALE (Abnormal Load Engineering) caught on fire. They salvaged it by scrapping the truck carrier and converting it to a pedestal crane that is transported with a standard lowboy. But in 2011 it fell off a transport trailer. I can't find if it was salvaged from that accident.

HeavyLift has photos of an AK912 at a tank farm job.

A sales entry has several photos of an AK912 that you can scroll through including these two:

a

b

John's comment: "Liebherr truck crane." Note this design has eight axles.

John W. Coke posting

John W. Coke posting

New Pedestrian Bridges: Kokomo, IN, Miami, FL, Boston, MA and Phoenix, AZ

Florida International University bridge disaster in Miami
Boston bridge construction

Pheonix bridge construction

(A trail bridge in Slingerlands, NY, collapsed during construction.)

Kokomo Bridge

(Satellite)

(Update: between Feb 2012 ande Sep 2013, Kokomo also built a pedestrian bridge across Wildcat Creek.)

AJ Walden posted four photos with the comment:

Big thanks to Scott gmk6300l and Steve gmk6400l from Maxim Crane out of Indianapolis for setting a 190 foot long 200,000 lbs pedestrian bridge in Kokomo ,Indiana for me on 3/28/18. It was a long day and both were great ops to work with and did a he'll of a job for me.

Dennis DeBruler Was this truss built along side the road with the lattice boom crane and then these two Groves swung it in place. In the last photo, what is the boom under the bridge doing?
AJ Walden Yes it's was built on the side of the road. The last photo is the 450 breaking down after the bridge was set.
AJ Walden 6 ranging in length from 56 feet to 67 feet and 29k to 35k in weight per piece would have been nice to of had more room but it was a fun build.

This 200', $2m bridge is obviously a concrete truss bridge with an arch added for additional strength.

1, cropped

2

3

4

It will connect the Nickle Plate Trail north of IN-931 with the Industrial Heritage Trail south of IN-931. The trails are the abandoned segment of NKP's Lake Erie & Western route to the north through Peru to Rochester.

KokomoTribune1, Satellite

Future connection: The red line on this map illustrates the approximate path the Industrial Heritage Trail will take as it connects with the Nickel Plate Trail. A pedestrian bridge will be built over 931 to connect the two trails.

Submitted photo

The bridge was manufactured in four pieces. [KokomoTribune2] [Note that AJ's comment indicates there was six pieces.] "The premanufactured bridge is currently in pieces and will be put together over the highway." [KokomoTribune3]


A drone video shows them adding the final piece to the truss. It also shows how it looked after it was installed. They could not capture the lift of the whole truss because that was done at night, as AJ's photos show.

FIU Bridge

(Update: some information from a NTSB video)

I haven't written about the 950-ton Florida International University Bridge because it collapsed on 3/15/2018 just a few days after it was moved into position over the highway. Thus it has been all over the news. Now when you do a Google search, most of the entries are about lawsuits.

They pulled four bodies out of the rubble the day of the crash, and I see the death toll is now up to six. [CBS] I have seen dashcam videos of the collapse. It was a catastrophic failure. The truss members were post-tensioned with two rods each. They were changing the stress on the rods after the move to compensate for the change between the moving equipment supporting the truss away from the edges and the abutments supporting the truss at the edges. Some reports said they were doing a stress test. But evidently that had been completed before the collapse. Reports indicated that they did not stop the traffic for stress testing, with the implication that you don't do stress testing over live traffic.

A pylon with cable stays was supposed to be added. But that was to stiffen the truss. It was not supposed to be needed to support the truss. FIU was bragging about the innovative nature of the bridge design.

From Kokomo Tribune

David Mack captured a couple of tweets before they were deleted. They provide photos of the bridge with the equipment that was used to move it into place.

David Mack tweet from Kokomo Tribune

David Mack tweet from Kokomo Tribune

40 photos of FIU bridge collapse

I watched blancolirio's channel concerning the Orville Dam disaster. I learned he has good content, so when I saw he is covering the FIU collapse, I'll try to catch them.

(new window)


Update:
(new window)


I set through 23 minutes of this video before I gave up watching because he was basically repeating himself over and over. One thing I did learn is that only four of the eight post-tension ducts in the canopy had been used. When I found another video from this guy, I didn't even look at it because it became obvious from the comments that he should be ignored. I'll patiently wait for more videos from blancolirio.

At this location in a video, I learned that one of the bolts tightened too easily. That indicates the steel tendon had transitioned from its elastic stage to its plastic stage. That is, it had lost its strength. They knew this loose nut was bad news because they discussed it. But they evidently shrugged their shoulders and continued to pull the tendon until it broke. They did not clear the traffic under the bridge even though they had evidence that a tendon had more strain than it could handle.

Boston Bridge

northeastern.edu
[Lifting a 132', 242,000 pound span into place to cross the five MBTA and Amtrak rail lines that divide the Northeastern University campus (Unfortunately, I could not make the time-lapse video work for me.)]
Dennis DeBruler shared
It looks like a MLC650 to me. The article states: "Such a heavy piece [242,000 pounds] required one of the largest cranes on the East Coast to lift it."
Richard Himelrick It is a 650 was by there the other day it really stood out against the skyline.

Dennis DeBruler shared this link in a Manitowoc group.
Richard Himelrick It is a 650 was by there the other day it realy stood out against the skyline.
Sarah Wolfe I swear every project article calls every crawler crane the biggest in the state/on the coast.
Marty Jr Jackson posted two photos as comments:

1

2
[It looks like there are mats extended towards the bridge spans. So it had to walk the load as well as swing it about 180 degrees.]

Pheonix, AZ

Bragg Companies posted three photos with the comment: "BRAGG COMPANIES – PHOENIX, AZ: Bragg Companies used their Liebherr LTM1400 all-terrain crane to lift and place half of the multi-use bridge as part of the Interstate 10 Broadway Curve Improvement Project. The 389’ bridge will allow easy access to Tempe Diablo Stadium, as well as commuters and recreational users who want to walk, run or bike safely over the Interstate. Bragg Companies has the most skilled operators and specialized equipment to handle all your project needs."

[I don't know what the first crane is doing. They used a lot larger crane to do the lift over the Interstate.]

1

2

3

I presume the bridge crosses the interstate around here.

Satellite