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Fire damaging Sacramento tressle

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  • Member since
    August 2003
  • From: Near Promentory UT
  • 1,590 posts
Posted by dldance on Sunday, April 1, 2007 8:03 PM
 1435mm wrote:

I take nothing away from UP, but this is a heroic accomplishment only if you compare it to the feeble organizational and logistical capabilities of most corporations and government entities.  This is nothing unusual for railroading.  NS's accomplishments after Katrina were 100X the magnitude of this.  Some other organizations I've had the pleasure of working with that have a similar attitude and understanding are electric utilities and combat units of the U.S., British, and Australian military, organizations that understand geography, time, and weather. 

Most organizations can't live outside of their nice climate-controlled box with their needs like power, water, policing, office supplies all arriving like clockwork magic.  Railroading is a game played outdoors in the middle of nowhere, 7/24.  You get it right or you're run out.

S. Hadid 

Well said.  My favorite example of railroad disaster recovery are the Thistle Tunnels in Ut.

dd

  • Member since
    December 2001
  • From: Denver / La Junta
  • 10,820 posts
Posted by mudchicken on Monday, April 2, 2007 4:09 PM
 Chris30 wrote:

I know a few motorists in the Chicago area who are wondering if the UP and their contract construction crews do roadwork. A little more than two weeks to replace a big bridge... more than two years to replace an expressway. It's almost hard to imagine that something that size could be rebuilt so fast.

CC

Unfortunately, John Q. Public does not understand the difficulties and expense of rebuilding under traffic and/or working at night (not to mention the additional safety risks)...

If circumstances had been a little different, lack of traffic might have been a blessing to Uncle Pete as somebody had cleared the table for them to do their best work. The fire may have also minimized the medling from local agency officials. BNSF and UP have begun standardizing their precast concrete bridge components since about 1993. (other types of bridges are not so interchangable). Looks like a boom year for the precast yards....The UP bridge gangs will just go onto other projects. Right now, they are only limited by the number of system bridge gangs and their related equipment. Can anybody spare an Ohio Crane and a Birminghammer Pile driver?

Mudchicken Nothing is worth taking the risk of losing a life over. Come home tonight in the same condition that you left home this morning in. Safety begins with ME.... cinscocom-west
  • Member since
    September 2002
  • From: Rockton, IL
  • 4,821 posts
Posted by jeaton on Monday, April 2, 2007 5:20 PM

 mudchicken wrote:
 Can anybody spare an Ohio Crane and a Birminghammer Pile driver?

I have two.  Have your people call my people.Sleepy [|)]

"We have met the enemy and he is us." Pogo Possum "We have met the anemone... and he is Russ." Bucky Katt "Prediction is very difficult, especially if it's about the future." Niels Bohr, Nobel laureate in physics

  • Member since
    February 2002
  • From: Muncie, Indiana...Orig. from Pennsylvania
  • 13,456 posts
Posted by Modelcar on Monday, April 2, 2007 6:27 PM

....On the super fast of rebuilding of the trestle's....{two of them}, would be my question of such quick accomplishment of surveying....determining just where to sink each piling....Believe the structures are on a curve too.

Quentin

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