Eastern Railroad Discussion > K&IT RR (now NS) bridge on fire in Louisville, Ky.

This is breaking news on a local TV station. The NS bridge over the Ohio River connecting Louisville, Ky. and New Albany, In., Better know to the locals as the "Old K&IT RR (Kentucky and Indiana Terminal Rail Road) is burning. It's one of two bridges between Louisville and Indiana and probably the busiest of the two. No pictures at theis time since it just happened. TV station WHAS-11 had some pictures from their news chopper. There is a very short story at http://www.whas11.com/home/Railroad-car-on-fire-on-KI-Bridge--265292421.html but that is subject to change. There is a train on the tracks in the middle of the fire. The bridge is a two track bridge so it's a major structure on the route.

This bridge is a major link in the line between St. Louis, Mo. and Danville, Ky. There will probably be some detours from Danville to Cincinnati to Columbus, Oh. to Indianapolis and then into St. Louis. Trains between Danville and St. Louis and heading toward Louisville have few other detours that I know of that would be easy. Locally, the Louisville side of the detour could be done easy enough but the Indiana side would be difficult. The L&I RR could be used between Louisville and Indianapolis. Just a matter of how they want to reroute trains and who's going to allow the extra traffic. P&L is (or was) picking up some extra NS trains a month or two ago but I doubt that they could pick up the full load. CSX has their "Texas" route that goes from Louisville to Henderson, Ky. Those might be used for trains that are in route but anything leaving Danville or St. Louis will either take a detour or be turned around.

I have to leave to go somewhere so I won't be able to update this for several hours so you can check the local media for updates. WHAS-11, WAVE-3, WLKY-32, and WDRB-41 will probably be the best places to look for updates.

News at 11.

John

http://www.wave3.com/story/25909133/train-cars-catch-fire-on-ki-bridge-over-ohio-river

NKPSOUTHERN Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> I see it's an Intermodal train. CSX or NS?


NS. With the Monon being idle, CSX no longer has any through routes that cross that bridge.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 06/30/14 16:01 by toledopatch.

What is used to put out such a fire? Fireboats?

So what route do the Chicago to Atlanta Intermodal trains use?

NKPSOUTHERN Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> So what route do the Chicago to Atlanta Intermodal
> trains use?

NS: Via Fort Wayne and Cincinnati.
CSX: Via Evansville and Nashville.

NKPSOUTHERN Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> So what route do the Chicago to Atlanta Intermodal
> trains use?

NS intermodal run via Ft. Wayne, Muncie, Cincinnati, Danville, Chattanooga. As noted on the thread above, this will have an impact on traffic to/from Princeton, St. Louis, and Kansas City.

Andrew

Posted from iPhone



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 06/30/14 16:10 by florida581.

Thanks. Don't really care about the NS. I work for CSX and was wondering if this was going to mess up the Q029 Intermodal from Chicago into Atlanta Hulsey.

It looks as if one of the cars has derailed.

santafedan Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> It looks as if one of the cars has derailed.

Worse than that, it looks like the bridge deck has caught on fire. If not extinguished quickly, that could damage the steel truss structure and require extensive repairs.

So I'm guessing that the old roadway decks can't support the load of a fire truck to effectively battle the fire up close and personal?
Wow! I still recall the news of the Poughkeepsie Bridge burning and that it is now only a bicycle trail when it should be a vital rail lifeline to New England and even tying New york City to the nation. How near-sighted this nations vision has become concerning things much more important then "where will I ride my bike"? Do I sound cynical? Yup! You are correct. Do I like the nice photos of the rail traffic below along the Hudson, sure. Would I rather see rail traffic going to NYC and NE without the long reroute via Albany, even better. I sure hope that the firefighters doused this fire before it takes out yet another important railroad bridge that would cost enormous sums of money to replace.
Gonut

From reading the latest coverage, it looks like there was some damage, but nothing so dire as the effective destruction of the Poughkeepsie Bridge's usefulness for trains. NS may need to do some deck repairs, not sure how long that will take.

As for Poughkeepsie, there really isn't enough rail freight business left in southern New England to justify it as a railroad bridge. Hasn't been for decades. If the business had been there, it would have been fixed -- presuming it would have even caught fire in the first place, since there's widespread suspicion to this day that it was an arson by the Penn Central.

I got home about 30 minutes ago. Let me try to update the situation and give a little history of the bridge and some Geography

The fire was on the Indiana end of the bridge but probably was actually in Kentucky. I can’t tell exactly where it is but it seems to be close to the shore line, maybe 5 to 10 car lengths from the border. The border is the high water mark of 1792 when Kentucky became a state. With the building of dams along the river the border is now somewhere out in the river in some places. Not sure but I think that since this bridge crosses the river a mile or two downstream from the dam the border is at or very near the shore. The bridge is approximately 2700 feet long, 2200 feet over water.

I drove as close as I could get without getting out of the car. Not easy to get to a good viewing place in the car and police had most of the roads near the bridge blocked. I drove through the area about four and a half hours after the fire started and it was still burning. There was smoke all over New Albany, Indiana and smoke still rising from the bridge area. Since I was alone I didn’t want to go walking around in the shadows by myself. The area is not all that bad but I just didn’t want to take a chance. The New Albany In., Clarksville In., and Louisville Ky. fire departments were all on site on the Indiana side. The news reports showed some on the Louisville side.

The bridge was built a little over 100 years ago. The firefighters are fortunate in that years ago the bridge had a shelf on each side for highway traffic, ten cent toll. That was closed probably about 40 years ago when an overweight dump truck dropped a wheel through the road surface. The K&I RR decided to close it rather than fix it. They use it for fairly light vehicles. Eventually it was fixed it but only for use by their own vehicles. There are efforts going on now to open those roadways to pedestrian traffic but NS is not in favor of that. I couldn’t see it very well but from a distance but I didn’t see any fire trucks on the bridge. The firemen had to carry the hoses to the fire.

Here’s a list of some local media outlets. These are subject to change since the event is ongoing at this time. As you look at this there may be more up to date info.
http://www.whas11.com/ 3:12 video. Shows cars moving off bridge while on fire.
http://www.whas11.com/home/Railroad-car-on-fire-on-KI-Bridge--265292421.html?gallery=y&img=1&c=y#/home/Railroad-car-on-fire-on-KI-Bridge--265292421.html?gallery=y&img=0&c=y&c=y This is a 15 picture slide show.

http://www.wave3.com/story/25909133/train-cars-catch-fire-on-ki-bridge-over-ohio-river Video 2:42
http://www.wave3.com/slideshow?widgetid=118953&clienttype=generic&mobilecgbypass Slideshow

http://www.wlky.com/news/crews-battle-fire-on-ki-bridge/26734896#!6I2RH Video 3:20
http://www.wlky.com/news/26735360#!6IYab Slideshow

http://www.wdrb.com/story/25909200/several-railroad-ties-ablaze-on-kentucky-indiana-bridge Video 0:25
In one of the pictures it looks like a car is derailed but I think it’s just the angle and one load is single stack and the adjacent car is double stack. They pulled the cars off the bridge and when they shot it from above and pretty much in line with it, it looked like everything was on the track. The cars that were on fire contained tea bags and toys.

A little history about the north end of the bridge. It wasn’t Tehachapi but leaving the bridge going north and then heading west, the train went to about where it crossed Indiana highway 111. The train made a right turn into a 270 degree turn and went under the bridge to go west. People in that area hated it because when a train was making the loop, every street into and out of the area was blocked except a small road that was little more than an alley. Sometime 20 or 30 years ago they rerouted the tracks so that it eliminated the loop and turned left to go west.

I will try to post an update in the morning or at least around noon.

John

CNN is reporting that a train tire caught fire and is the culprit...

http://www.cnn.com/video/data/2.0/video/cvplive/cvpstream2.html

Russ

Train 'tire'? LOL

Not much on the morning news about this other than it took about 5 1/2 hours to put the fire out. Most of the reports are saying that the fire started before the train got there. Kind of make you wonder why the engineer didn't stop before he reached the fire. Speeds across the bridge is 15 MPH. I wasn't there so I don't have any idea of what happened and why. One station reported that the dispatcher told the engineer to stop the train after the engineer reported the fire and after the engine had passed the fire. There were also conflicting reports that either 1.) a contractor, or 2.) NS MOW crews had been working on the bridge earlier in the day
or the day before (Sunday?).

As I drove in the area last night there wasn't much chatter on the radio, AAR 09 and 56. Heard some yard work and there was some chatter around the bridge but not much. Mostly someone asking someone else where they were or how they could get access to an area since the police had so many streets closed

Attachments are the profile charts for the area. The bridge just happens to be between two pages.
1) The Indiana side. The right edge is mile 270.
2) The Kentucky side. Mile 270 is at the left edge. Miles increase going east from St. Louis.

Sorry I don't know much else.

John

---

---

Some engineers have been trained to avoid braking or throttling up on a bridge. This particular bridge looks sturdy, however.

That's what they get for using those recaps. Train tire shreds are all over the place these days......


P Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Train 'tire'? LOL

ctillnc Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Some engineers have been trained to avoid braking
> or throttling up on a bridge. This particular
> bridge looks sturdy, however.


Thanks for the comment. I believe you would be safe saying that the bridge is sturdy. It carries two tracks. Being built in 1908 (I think) it aint no Tinker Toy. It was built before they had computers to figure out how little iron they could put in the structure and still keep the load out of the water. I think the figured out about what they needed and doubled it for safety.

As a matter of fact, the bridge is at the end of a wye and sometimes they run out on the bridge to clear the wye. The last time I was on that bridge I was in the cab of T&P 610 excursion train from Lexington to the State Fair in Louisville. The fairground is 5 or 6 miles from Youngstown Yard. I was a volunteer working the safety crew on that train. We dropped off the passengers at the Fairgrounds and took the train to Youngstown Yard for service. While there we had to turn it so we headed to the wye, went out on the bridge, stopped, backed down another leg, and then back on the main into the yard.

You might not believe this this. That State Fair Train ran in August. It was HOT that day but the cab of that steam locomotive was about the coolest place around. Down on the ground there was too much stuff around, blocking the air flow but that cab was high enough that there was some decent breeze flowing through. Hot air moving is better that just hot air. Also, while we were out there a barge tow was coming out of the canal and locks. The engineer blew the whistle several times to try to exchange greetings but the tow boat operator wouldn't reply. I'm suspecting that there was some kind of rule preventing un-necessary horn blowing in the locks or canal.


John
Edit: added comments an Google Earth file.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 07/01/14 09:00 by wa4umr.

---

Just reported on local news that the bridge was back in service. They did say that they thought the fire was caused by a burning tire on the train. Has the railroad ever used tires since the days of steam locomotives? Those news people wouldn't know what a tire was if it mashed their toe. But.... I guess if we were reporting on something in their business we would do the best we could but we would use an improper term for something. It still makes you cringe when you hear that and that the conductor was driving the train.

I think this will be my last post to this thread unless something else major pops up. Thanks to all that followed it and contributed to it. I hope I haven't bored you too much with my comments.

Happy foaming.

John