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A massive effort to rebuild six major bridges following Hurricane Katrina's devastation is now under way on CSXT's Gulf Coast main trunk.
CSXT Vice President-Engineering Don Bagley, who has been in the railroad business more than 35 years, has dealt with the aftermath of numerous hurricanes, washouts, and tornadoes. "I've never seen anything that would come close to comparing to the destruction inflicted on the Gulf Coast area," he says.
When Hurricane Katrina roared across the Gulf Coast, CSX Transportation was battered hard. Within a 39-route-mile section east of New Orleans, 26 contiguous route-miles were almost totally destroyed. Within those 26 miles, six major bridges ranging in size from 950 to 10,000 feet were heavily damaged or destroyed. CSXT and its primary contractors-RJ Corman Railroad Co. LLC, Jordan Pile Driving Inc., and Scott Bridge Co. Inc.-are battling to restore service across those bridges as quickly as possible.
As CSXT's general engineering consultant, TranSystems provided damage assessment services between Pascagoula, Miss., and New Orleans, and is currently providing onsite construction management and inspection services for the repair and rehabilitation of the line from Gulfport, Miss., to New Orleans.
The largest of the six bridges is the 10,000-foot Bay St. Louis Bridge (above), consisting of a concrete ballast deck with concrete box-girder spans. "That's the one with the most significant damage," says Bagley. "We lost everything from the piers up, and the piers were the only things remaining across the bay. With an eye to the time required to reconstruct and to handle material, we're rebuilding the bridge with four precast concrete girders on each span. Those weigh about 26 tons each. Then we're forming and pouring a cast-in-place concrete deck on top of the girders, all the way across. We have installed 232 of those concrete girders, about 58 spans." In total, there are 164 spans in the bridge, each...