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Ballast on Bridges?
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<p>You didn't mention if you are looking at main tracks, sidings, branch lines, or industrial spurs.</p><p>From a railroad engineering department perspective (a large part of my job) there is no such terminology as a closed-deck bridge. There is open-deck and ballasted-deck. Open-deck is cheaper to construct both in deck material and in bridge structure, since the structure does not have to carry the weight of the ballast and additional deck material. Open deck also costs less to maintain, if one considers only replacement of the deck material. For a branch line or industrial spur, new construction, open-deck is all that's typically required, but for some bridge situations ballasted deck is sometimes used anyway because the cost differential isn't significant. </p><p>It is considerably more difficult to maintain proper track alignment with an open-deck bridge thus their use is strongly discouraged for lines with heavy tonnage or where ride quality is important. There are still many open-deck bridges extant in high-tonnage routes, but as the bridge or bridge deck is renewed the general practice is to replace with ballasted-deck. </p><p>The exception to the rule of "always put ballasted deck in a main route" is when the bridge span is very long, on the order of 200' or more. In that case the additional cost of the bridge structure becomes so significant that it overwhelms the maintenance cost inherent in an open-deck bridge, and open-deck is specified.</p><p>S. Hadid </p>
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