Other than last year, when a bridge (or trestle?) on a shortline railroad collapsed while hauling something big for NASA, are railroad bridge failures rare?
Thanks to Chris / CopCarSS for my avatar.
Offhand, the only bridge failure I really remember was that of the AT&N's bridge across the Tombigbee River, just below Cochrane, Ala. I do not remember the year, but it was about 1970. Afterwards, I talked with the conductor of the train that had just gone across before the bridge fell into the river. He was pretty calm about it when we talked, but it must have been quite a shock to hear and watch the bridge fall right after the train left it. The bridge was never replaced.
The train was an Amory, Miss., to Mobile, Ala., that came into Aliceville, Ala., on the SLSF. The new routing was SLSF through Aliceville to Boligee, Ala., thence AGS to York, Ala., and then AT&N to Mobile. At first, the SLSF crews said that they should operate the Mobile trains as far as Boligee, but the AT&N crews were given seniority rights for the Mobile trains Aliceville-Boligee. Aliceville to York was only about three miles longer through Boligee than it was on the AT&N.
Johnny
I can think of two bridge failures here in British Columbia, both were wooden bridges owned by Canadian National. A bridge collapsed under a freight train, which resulted in the death of two CN employees on May 14, 2003 near McBride, British Columbia.http://www.tc.gc.ca/eng/mediaroom/releases-nat-2004-04-h031e-3527.htm
The other was on the line to Kitimat. It happened as the wood towers were being replaced with steel, and a crane was on the bridge at the time.
I'd say that yes, they are "rare'' - however that term is defined statistically. I suppose that either the FRA or an AREMA Committee does track such events, though.
The purely 'structural failure' of a well-maintained bridge to carry a design train load is near zero. There's almost always some other outside factor that damages a key component and which then leads to the failure, such as (in no particular order):
- Being struck by a barge, ship, or truck underneath, which cripples a bent, pier, girder, or truss member, etc.;
- Being struck by a shifted load or derailed car on top, esp. the end portals of through truss bridges;
- Undermining by floodwater scour, or a landslide or other subsurface geotechnical failure;
- Inadequate maintenance, which leads to deterioration and loss of design strength, in a variety of ways;
- Goofs by the personnel who are maintaining or upgrading the bridge - lack of or improper shoring, bracing, 'falsework', or other temporary measures while the work is being performed;
- Fire - accidental - sometimes by welders, or intentional.
In short, those failures are either preventable with reasonable care, supervening acts of nature or man, or random chance.
- Paul North.
I’d say they are rare, but yes, they do “happen.”
Justin
The road to to success is always under construction. _____________________________________________________________________________ When the going gets tough, the tough use duct tape.
Is it rare because the bridges in the worst condition were on lines that were taken out of service, or because the railroads take better care (?) of the the ones they still have?
Mainly - and very generally, with some notable exceptions - because the railroads take better care - or at least, precautions, such as speed limits and load limits, etc. - with the ones that are operated over. Also, there are only a limited group of people involved with them - such as the train crews - who are real interested in their own safety and condition of the bridges. Accordingly, appropriate special instructions and precautions - such as using spacer cars between locomotives or heavy cars, etc. - can also be implemented.
If a major bridge is in poor condition - and the railroad has exhausted the quick and easy repairs and stop-gap measures such as the above - the railroad is then faced with the hard decision of whether to repair the bridge, or abandon the line, or maybe serve the far end only via another branch or trackage rights from another railroad, etc. Usually by that point the economics of the line generally and elsewhere are so poor that the decision is relatively easy - there's a lot more than 1 bridge that is in poor condition. That's essentially part of what happened with the ex-Erie RR Kinzua Viaduct in north-central Pennsylvania. Even the Knox & Kane tourist railroad wouldn't run across it in recent years, and when most of it collapsed during a severe windstorm/ tornado several years ago - in the midst of a state-funded repair project, ironically enough - the short line threw in the towel and abandoned the line.
In contrast, there are many abandoned lines - now rail-trails - that cross over huge bridges that are still in excellent condition. Think of the ex-Milwaukee Puget Sound Extension, the former Western Maryland along the Potomac River, and others. I had one ConRail Bridges & Buildings supervisor tell me that the 3 bridges along the Bushkill Creek in Northampton County that I was asking about for a rail-trail never gave him any trouble, and he had no doubts about them - it was always the embankments on either side that washed-out, etc.
The very recent, excellent, and thorough - if commensurately lengthy, though - report that Jamie provided the link to above (thanks ! ) -
http://www.raib.gov.uk/cms_resources.cfm?file=/100203_R022010_Stewarton.pdf
is instructive in several ways. That was a short bridge over a country lane that was well over a century old, and failed due to unrepaired corrosion of the girders - about a month before it was scheduled to be repalced anyway. For the purpose of your question and this thread, the following several paragraphs from it are pertinent [emphasis added - PDN]:
From the British Department for Transport's Rail Accident Investigation Branch ''Report 02/2010 - February 2010 - Derailment of a freight train near Stewarton, Ayrshire - 27 January 2009",© Crown copyright 2010, pages 31 and 32 of 94 (approx. 6.87 MB in size):
Discounted causes
116 There were a series of collapses involving underbridges with cast iron beams in the 19
117 More recent railway underbridge collapses have occurred, but these have generally been the result of weakening due to external factors such as
What was the reason of the collaspe of the ex WP bridge near Palisade, Nv last year or 2008?
That's the one which Chad Thomas was kind enough to provide some photos of - and I believe there were also some from another local railfan or newspaper, etc. I recall that it was of the 'derailed-car-hits-diagonal-portal-member' variety, which is almost always fatal to the bridge - or, possibly a shifted load, though I haven't seen anything in print.
By the way, as to the original question posted by Murphy - my understanding is that there was some extensive maintenance work being performed on that wooden trestle at the time, though again I've seen nothing in print yet. That doesn't mean it was the cause - but I haven't seen any other plausible cause identified, either.
Around 1977 a wooden trestle about 1/2 mile east of Magnolia MN collapsed under an eastbound C&NW train going from Sioux Falls to Worthington. Most of the cars on the train were loaded with rock and a few ended up in the creek bed. I was 17 at the time and had just bought my first camera, so I do have some poor quality pictures of the mess. The trestle was rebuilt.
Murphy Siding Other than last year, when a bridge (or trestle?) on a shortline railroad collapsed while hauling something big for NASA, are railroad bridge failures rare?
Well, I had a nice post on this put together - then MS Internet Explorer crapped out on me. So here goes again -
Here's the link to the FRA report on this - it's 10 pages, about 265 KB in size:
Headquarters Assigned Accident Investigation Report HQ-2007-24
M & B Railroad, LLC - Myrtlewood, AL - May 2, 2007 - at -
http://www.fra.dot.gov/downloads/safety/Accident_Investigation/2007/hq200724.pdf
Short version is that a poorly designed/ constructed old trestle - without any longitudinal bracing, in poor condition - some of the bents were way out of plumb, in the midst of emergency and temporary repairs, and seriously overloaded by exceptionally heavy cars, just gave way.
From the report [emphasis added - PDN]:
Each of the eight cars carrying rocket booster motors was equipped with eight axles in a span bolster truck arrangement, in which each car was carried on four standard freight car trucks, with the two trucks at each end of the car supporting a span bolster which in turn carried the car body. The gross weights of these eight cars ranged from 462,800 pounds to 505,600 pounds.
The gross weight of a common free-running freight car on four axles is 263,000 pounds, and most large railroads permit the operation of four-axle cars weighing 286,000 pounds. Although the eight heavy cars in this train were carried on eight axles rather than four, the concentration of eight axles within the 65-foot length of each of the cars presents a severe load condition to a bridge.
MNBR Train S100-29 was the first revenue train to operate on the bridge after cribbing had been placed under the intermediate spans. The locomotive engineer reported that when the train's locomotives had entered onto the bridge by about 200 feet from the west, or entering, end of the bridge, he heard a loud "pop." Initial observations and reports by MNBR indicate that the bridge first failed near Bent 20 under three of the 8-axle flat cars carrying the rocket boosters. When that portion of the bridge failed, it appears the stringers to the east of Bent 20 uniformly pulled toward the west, toward the rear of the train, and off of the end bent (Bent 55) cap. That loss of support for the stringers and track on the east end caused the bridge to fail at a second location, under the locomotives, thus derailing the locomotives and the passenger coach. A more definite analysis of the bridge failure was prevented by the destruction of the bridge and its components in the accident.
PROBABLE CAUSE AND CONTRIBUTING FACTORS:
A contributing factor to this accident was the initial out-of-plumb condition and lack of longitudinal bracing of the timber bents of Bridge 48.8.
FRA's investigation determined that the probable cause of this accident was bridge failure, caused by the rotation of several of the timber bents of Bridge 48.8, under a train load that exceeded the normal load capacity of the bridge.
blue streak 1 What was the reason of the collaspe of the ex WP bridge near Palisade, Nv last year or 2008?
Looking back at that thread - UP Derailment & Bridge Collapse on Overland Route - started Dec. 28, 2008 at -
http://cs.trains.com/trccs/forums/p/144348/1604384.aspx
it appears that the derailment happened first - 'root cause' of what, I don't know - and damaged the bridge so badly that it collapsed a few hours later.
See also http://www.jimdobbasinc.com/ -
"Palisade Canyon, NV—December 2008
A freight train derailed in a remote area along the Humboldt River triggering a bridge collapse and disruption of the Union Pacific Railroad’s East- West mainline."
and -
"The train was passing through an 875-foot tunnel when the derailment occurred. Three cars derailed inside the tunnel and at least a couple of cars ended up in the river, [rail company spokeswoman Zoe] Richmond said."
From UP Bridge out in Paliside Canyon at - http://www.trainorders.com/discussion/read.php?1,1834175 - and -
carlin derailment at - http://www.trainorders.com/discussion/read.php?1,1834963
Paul, looking at your report on the collapse of the M&BR bridge, I wonder: what was the Cooper rating of the bridge? Who selected that routing? Why was that routing selected? Did anybody employed by the M&BR who was involved in accepting the train realize what load would be placed on their line?
As to the collapse of the AT&N bridge, it may well have been caused by poor, if any, maintenance. Had the SLSF wanted to abandon the line between Aliceville and York, and so did not maintain the bridge (for many years, the twenty miles of the AT&N north of Aliceville was ten-mile-per-hour track, with very little, if any maintenance performed; it has now been abandoned for several years.)? As it is now, very little of the AT&N remains.
Paul_D_North_JrFRA's investigation determined that the probable cause of this accident was bridge failure, caused by the rotation of several of the timber bents of Bridge 48.8, under a train load that exceeded the normal load capacity of the bridge.
Paul North: There are several questions not asked or answered in this report. I'll go in order of occurrence.
1. Had other rocket booster trains also gone over this bridge in the past?
2. If so when was the last occurence?
3, If so did past trains have idler cars?
4. If so had there been a major weather event such as high water that may have caused lowering of the actual loads?
5. Why did UP not use idler cars even though their track could take this loading and did they cross any bridges on UP that may have the bridge's cooper ratings exceeded?
6. Was UP notified by M & B of the load limit? I thought that was always done before and oversize/ overweight loads?
7. Did M&B ETT show the load limit?
8, Why did M&B not insert idler cars? Did they think they were not as heavy as they turned out? * 8 axels over that short of a span certainly should have rung bells as to probably exceed cooper ratings.
9. Why run the first train using very high loads over the bridge when another train was there?
10. Why run passengers over the bridge?
11. Why various officals stand so close that they had to run when bridge started collasping?
Well----- we will never hear all these answers.
Carl
Railroader Emeritus (practiced railroading for 46 years--and in 2010 I finally got it right!)
CAACSCOCOM--I don't want to behave improperly, so I just won't behave at all. (SM)
Johnny, those are excellent questions. I've seen nothing that addresses any of them.
The nominal loading of the rocket motor cars would have been on the order of Cooper's E-77 - 500,000 lbs./ 65 ft. That's pretty heavy, but not unheard of, esp. for any kind of modern traffic.
But I recall that the train had used that line before, and sure enough -
"A spokesman for the manufacturer, Bryce Hallowell . . . said the train was taking the same route to the Kennedy Space Center that has been used for 30 years or more." (from DEMOPOLIS, Ala., May 2, 2007 - ''Train Carrying NASA Boosters Derails - Freight Train Derails In Alabama After Bridge Collapse; 6 Injured'', at - http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2007/05/02/national/main2754231.shtml )
There, I suspect, is the true answer - a variation of "We've always done it that way". If anybody ever actually carefully looked at that route, and considered and/ or rated that bridge, it might have been 30 years ago - and they're long gone, as is the validity of that assessment. So this appears to be yet another cautionary tale about the need for checking out the qualification or certification of something critical to an operation - ''The Emperor has no clothes'' kind of a thing - and leaving nothing left to chance, kind of like airframe ratings, and nuclear plant quality assurance procedures, etc. And rating the structural capacity of old timber bridges - and the many subtle and subjective judgments necessarily involved therein - is more of an art form than a mature science. See the brochure for an upcoming course/ seminar on Timber & Steel RailRoad Bridges next week at the University of Tennessee in Knoxville at -
http://ctr.utk.edu/ttap/training/brochures_2010/TimberSteelRRBridge_Knox.pdf
With much of the technical reasons already listed, one might conclude the steel railroad structures, especially after 1900 seemingly were "overbuilt" to the point it will or would take extraordinary circumstances to bring them down.
One can see abandoned RR bridges still standing in many locations, some that have been in that state for at least 60 years....{one I'm thinking of back in my home area of Pa.}. Here in Muncie, several on abandoned lines are standing and one pair...{end to end}, a thru truss structure look macho enough to stand another 100 years if the supports remain underthem....One masonary structure at the middle of the two spands and of course each concrete base structure at each end.
Again here in Muncie, a concrete {bypass highway}, bridge with prestressed horizonal beams under it....already looks scary.....and they have been built perhaps no more than 20 years ago. The ends of the prestressed beams are placed on their supports and the concrete is flaked away to the point the re-bar is visible and they only overlap onto the supports by about 6 or so inches.
They concerned me so much, several years ago, I stopped and took photos of the situation and sent them to our local officials, and their reply back to me was they were scheduled to renovate that bridge next season.....That was several years ago. I have photos but sorry, can't put them on here....They sure look scary to me.
My only point is, I believe RR bridges go far beyond this type of design and will not be compromised in a decade or so after they are built.
Quentin
Quenten- In our part of the world, I believe it's the road salt that kills the concrete bridges. I'd hope that road salt wouldn't be too much of an issue on a railroad bridge.
Am I right in thinking that the railroads must have regular bridge inspectors, or is that part of the job of the MOW gang?
Murphy Siding Quenten- In our part of the world, I believe it's the road salt that kills the concrete bridges. I'd hope that road salt wouldn't be too much of an issue on a railroad bridge.
You are correct.....In fact, the structure I related to in my previous post is at a connection {joint}, in the road surface on the bridge and the salt {brine}, has leaked down onto the ends of the prestressed horizonal beam ends I spoke of, and the result is the concrete has come off the beam ends to the point exposing the re-bar and it too is all rusted.....and with just a half a foot of the beam resting on it's support.....
And of course, not much chance of salt getting on a RR bridge in like amounts.
UP had a bridge collapse very similar to the Pallisades NV collapse a few years ago (may 05) in North Central ILL at Galt, IL (near Sterling) on the old C&NW line. Train derailed and took out a through truss bridge. UP built a temp shoo-fly around it until the double track main was restored.
http://www.uprr.com/customers/service/galtderailment.shtml
http://www.pbase.com/trailryder/up_derailment_galt_illinois
jscott/ Scott is exactly right - as I recall, the fellow's name was Hernan DeSoto, or similar. The whole episode was written up in layman's language in an article in Trains by Ed King as one of his 'trials and tribulations' as Manager of Suburban Services (or a similar title) for the Rock Island back then. See -
Disaster du jour and other stories Trains, June 1986 page 30 Three years, Manager of Suburban Operations ( COMMUTER, "KING, ED", RI, TRN )
It happened on a bitter cold morning in January, as I recall. What happened is that the pier or column cracked extensively - almost broke - where a brace was welded into it. The investigation resulted in the documentation of a phenomenon known as 'lamellar tearing', which often results from the high heat of welding and subsequent cooling stresses, perpendicular to the main axis of a member, among other causes. Some of the members may have had to have been replaced - temporary repairs included shoring and cribbing as reinforcement. As I recall, some of the permanent repairs involved rewelding the connection, and even drilling a hole in the main member to act as a 'stop' in the event the crack re-developed and propagated that far again. Moer generally, it led to much closer reviews and some changes in how those kinds of connections were 'detailed' and fabricated.
Los Angeles Times
September 23, 1993
Amtrak Train Derails in Bayou, Killing 44
Sunset Limited from L.A. plunges off bridge in Alabama. A barge may have rammed into trestle.
J. MICHAEL KENNEDY and ERIC HARRISON, TIMES STAFF WRITERS
SARALAND, Ala. — The Amtrak Sunset Limited from Los Angeles to Miami with 206 people aboard hurtled off an aging trestle early Wednesday and plunged like a steel stone into a foggy Alabama bayou, killing 44 and leaving at least three others trapped in wreckage that sank into an ink-black swamp crawling with snakes and alligators.
A locomotive erupted into flames, burning its crew. Fire spread to the wood-and-steel trestle. One of the coach cars hung over the edge of the 84-year-old structure but did not fall. Riders, many of them asleep when the train derailed at 2:47 a.m. local time, screamed and scrambled through the wreckage. Several rescued others, including a 3-year-old boy.
The FBI said a tugboat pushing six barges loaded with concrete and coal might have rammed and weakened the trestle shortly before the Sunset Limited arrived. "One of those barges has a big dent in it," said special agent Chuck Archer in Mobile, Ala. He said concrete had been broken away from the foundation of the trestle and that pieces of concrete were found on the barge.
Amtrak said it was the worst train wreck in its history. The toll could eclipse the cumulative total of 48 people killed in all crashes on Amtrak since it was created 23 years ago to run the nation's long-distance passenger trains. Alabama Gov. Jim Folsom, who flew over the bayou as smoke and steam rose from the wreckage, said, "It was the most terrible sight I have ever witnessed."
About 40 people on the train when it crashed had boarded in Los Angeles, an Amtrak official said. There was no immediate word on whether any of them were among the fatalities. Authorities said they did not expect to complete a list of the dead before today. They said most of the victims were found inside the train cars. Five of the injured were hospitalized in critical condition.
The Sunset Limited, which became a coast-to-coast train five months ago by extending the eastern end of its run from New Orleans to Miami, carried 189 passengers and a crew of 17. It left Los Angeles on Sunday, changed crews in New Orleans and headed toward Alabama. Shortly before 3 a.m. Wednesday, it approached the trestle over Bayou Canot about 10 miles north of Mobile.
An hour earlier, a 132-car CSX freight train with three locomotives had crossed the trestle without mishap.
The trestle speed limit for passenger trains is 70 m.p.h. It was not known how fast the Sunset Limited was rolling. Like almost everyone, Mike Dopheide, 26, of Omaha, Neb., was asleep. He had gotten on in Los Angeles after visiting his sister in Highland Park. "Suddenly I was bumped on the floor, and you could hear the brakes squealing," he said afterward. "I knew then that we had derailed."
It was dark. Flames spread from one of the three locomotives, Dopheide said, and people around him could not find emergency exits. He said his car began filling with water and smoke.
"Oh, my God!" a woman shouted. "We're going to die."
Dopheide finally found a door and tried to open it. It would not budge. Then he noticed a piece of timber. It had smashed through a window, he said, and was keeping the car from submerging completely. But he saw that it offered a way to escape. He climbed through the window and out onto the timber.
He saw four Amtrak crew members standing on the roof of one of the locomotives.
"Did you radio for help?" Dopheide shouted.
"No," one of them replied. "There's no radios."
Around him Dopheide saw a tragedy. All three locomotives and four of the eight cars on the train were off the bridge and in the bayou. One of the cars was for baggage, another was a dormitory car for the crew. The other two were passenger coaches.
The water was 25 feet deep. One of the coach cars was covered completely. The nose of the 80-foot lead locomotive was buried in bayou silt. Its crew members were still inside. A lounge car, a dining car, a sleeping car and a coach car were standing on the trestle.
A third of the coach car hung over the edge.
In the glow from the burning locomotive, survivors--joined by rescuers in helicopters and nearby residents in boats--tried to save as many people as possible. Several of the passengers were elderly. Dopheide helped eight of them through the timber-shattered window.
A tugboat appeared, shining a high-intensity beam of light on the wreckage. The tug inched its way to the side of the railroad cars, but it pushed too much debris against them to get close. It backed away and sent in two flat-bottomed skiffs.
Dopheide helped his eight survivors onto the boats.
Others climbed out of the train. They grabbed wooden debris to stay afloat until more help arrived. Dopheide was suddenly aware of the silence.
"Most people weren't saying anything to me because they were too frightened to talk," he said. "They were just holding onto debris or to each other. One lady was holding onto someone's belt."
Before long, the fire spread along the trestle and drew closer to wrecked cars.
Dopheide said he climbed back inside to see if anyone had been left behind. He searched for his glasses. People shouted at him, he said, asking him to look for medicine and purses. He said he threw out some duffel bags--but could not find his own belongings.
Then he scrambled back out to safety.
The bayou is home to snakes and alligators, some say bears as well. While alligators normally flee a disturbance as big as a train crash, some passengers in the water-filled cars worried about the snakes, which might be more venturesome.
"The car we were in sank," said Robert Watts, 61, a retired fire captain from Placerville, Calif. Finally, he said, someone opened a safety exit and the water poured in, cold and fast.
"I guess I was physically moving," Watts said later, "but I wasn't mentally coherent until the water rose to my waist and I realized, 'Hey this is serious, this is not a *** dream.' "
He said the water swirled like a whirlpool in a kitchen sink.
At one point, Watts thought he would die. "I thought, 'This is it. I'm ending my life here.' "
A woman with a 3-year-old boy shouted from across the aisle. "The mother hollered to take the baby. I took him and shoved him out and hollered for someone to take the baby. Someone did. And all of us bailed out."
Watts said he and his wife Betty, 58, along with several others held onto floating railroad ties. "My wife and I didn't get to the same railroad tie, but we kept within eyesight."
Every time he looked at his wife, he said, she seemed farther away. "But things were happening so fast," he said, "there was no time to get scared."
It was difficult, he said, to push the ties against the current in the bayou.
Watts said he and his wife were in the water for about 30 minutes before they reached safety. Ashore, he found the 3-year-old and his mother.
"That little boy never fussed or bothered. He just thought, 'Hey, this is a great game!' "
Not far away, Al Paiz, 52, of Mora, N.M., watched another rescue.
Seated next to him in one of the train cars was Fred Russell, 70, of Indio, Calif. "There was suddenly a roller coaster sensation," Paiz said. "Then the train was skidding on the track. It jumped, and everybody started sliding."
"There was a kid in the water having trouble," Paiz said. "He could not swim. Fred jumped out the window and dropped 20 feet to the water below to help."
Paiz, who cannot swim, said he admired his septuagenarian seatmate for taking that plunge. For his part, Paiz said he helped other passengers out through a window on the lower side of his car. He said he was the last to leave.
"I'm sure some of the people didn't get out," Paiz said, through tears.
Paiz was on his way to Miami for open heart surgery. He said he tried to stay calm as he finally dropped from one of the lower windows six feet down into the water.
The water was over his head, he said, and he held onto beams from the bridge until a boat came by and rescued him.
He was pronounced in good condition at a nearby hospital. He said Fred Russell reached shore safely as well.
By now, divers were going through submerged portions of the railroad cars hand over hand.
"Search conditions are very difficult because of the murky waters," said Coast Guard Lt. Cmdr. Dwight McGee. "It's frustrating when you know that there are survivors in need and you can't help."
The divers lifted bodies onto a barge. From there, they were taken to a lumber mill in the nearby town of Chickasaw. It served as a temporary morgue.
At one point during the afternoon, the search for bodies and survivors was suspended when it became apparent that a crane was needed to stabilize one of the railroad cars before divers could enter it safely.
"It shifted with the current and the weight inside," said Mobile Police Chief Harold Johnson. "We're trying to stabilize it because we don't want any more fatalities."
When asked whether the engineer of the train had been interviewed about possible causes for the accident, Johnson replied: "We believe he is underwater."
Archer, special agent in charge of the Mobile office of the FBI, said his investigators were looking into three possible causes: sabotage, structural defects and the likelihood that the bridge had been rammed by barges.
He placed most of his emphasis upon the barges. The tugboat pushing them might have taken a wrong channel during the foggy night, he said. They were found lashed together and moored in the Mobile River about a quarter of a mile from the crash site.
"We're looking at them," he said, "because one of those barges has a big dent in it."
Agents interviewed the tug operator but declined to identify him or reveal what he said.
Archer said the barges were not supposed to be in the waterway. The bayou is too shallow under the trestle, he said, and the bridge supports are not wide enough to accommodate barge traffic.
John Hammerschmidt, a member of the National Transportation Safety Board, also investigating the crash, said scrape marks on the barge seemed to match scrape marks on the trestle.
http://www.trainweb.org/vangab/bigbayou.htm
blue streak 1 Paul_D_North_JrFRA's investigation determined that the probable cause of this accident was bridge failure, caused by the rotation of several of the timber bents of Bridge 48.8, under a train load that exceeded the normal load capacity of the bridge. Paul North: There are several questions not asked or answered in this report. I'll go in order of occurrence. 1. Had other rocket booster trains also gone over this bridge in the past? 2. If so when was the last occurence? 3, If so did past trains have idler cars? 4. If so had there been a major weather event such as high water that may have caused lowering of the actual loads? 5. Why did UP not use idler cars even though their track could take this loading and did they cross any bridges on UP that may have the bridge's cooper ratings exceeded? 6. Was UP notified by M & B of the load limit? I thought that was always done before and oversize/ overweight loads? 7. Did M&B ETT show the load limit? 8, Why did M&B not insert idler cars? Did they think they were not as heavy as they turned out? * 8 axels over that short of a span certainly should have rung bells as to probably exceed cooper ratings. 9. Why run the first train using very high loads over the bridge when another train was there? 10. Why run passengers over the bridge? 11. Why various officals stand so close that they had to run when bridge started collasping? Well----- we will never hear all these answers.
A "handling carrier" arrangement is very similar to a "haulage" arrangement between two Class I roads, In a "haulage" arrangement. the "hauling" carrier actually provides the service, but does not appear in the pricing documents or in the waybill.
CShaveRRI remember one near failure of a bridge here in Chicago. It was the CTA's connecting line between the old south side "L" to the new line in the median of the Dan Ryan Expressway. Somebody riding under this bridge on a commuter train noticed what he thought was a crack in one of the girders--and he was right. Things were very hastily shored up, and the line was returned to service in a relatively short time. I don't know to what extent the bridge was rebuilt, but it is now used by the CTA's Orange Line trains to Midway Airport.
The "somebody" was a CRI&P bridge engineer who understood the significance of what he saw, and reported it as soon as could reach a telephone (this was before cell phones).
I've remembered a pair of bridge failures in Northern Idaho.
During April 2006 part of the former Milwaukee Road pile trestle at Benewah gave way under a St. Maries River crane. It was repaired more than a year later. http://www.rrpicturearchives.net/srchThumbs.aspx?srch=benewah&search=Search
The other took place much sooner (early 1980s?) when a former Spokane International trestle collapsed under a Union Pacific train, at Bonners Ferry(?). I believe at the time a replacement trestle was almost ready beside the failed bridge, so the line was not closed for too long.
The Bonners Ferry collapse was on December 6, 1985. Fortunately, only eight cars on the rear of the train (which was cabooseless by then) fell in, so no locomotives or employees were lost. It was one of the few wooden through-truss railroad bridges still in existence. UP was already building a new plate girder bridge next to it; completion schedule was sped up and they had the last span and track panel laid down two days later. My photo of the wooden bridge pre-collapse was in the December 1987 Trains. A photo of the aftermath was in the April 1987 Trains.
Absolutely not!!
Maybe I did not make it clear. According to the accident report UP originated the train (where ?). As the originating carrier they were responsible for initiating the overweight protocols for at least their operation. My question on that was why place 8 axels that close together when an idler car would have spread the load and not get close to UP cooper loading for any of their bridges.
Then it was definitely up to M&B ( and maybe the UP)* to verify that loads were not exceeded. Now the report stated that 2 different UP "WILD" reports had the load way over the rated load of the M&B bridge for 2 adjaecent cars (8 axels). The report was only factual since it was a FRA and not NTSB report. There was not any recommendation or even mention of idler cars which would have probably prevented this accident. ( $3.0M +) . Obviously M&B shuld have added idler flats.
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