Eastern Railroad Discussion > NS Ohio River bridge in Cincinnati OOS

It is being reported that the bridge is OOS pending an inspection that is underway. Initial, unofficial estimate is 24 hours, but not sure if NS has publicly released any statement as of yet.
I don't see it going that long unless there are serious problems.

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Any intel on the cause of this outage?  This is a very significant location on the network, with poor reroute options.

Traffic to resume at midnight. I'll ask the civil engineers who have seen the photos comment as I have no clue as to what all I'm looking at.

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The bridges base pedestal collapsed from the combined weight of the bridge
and the train traffic over time and it acted like a small wet cardboard box
with 100 pounds on it. 



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 10/23/23 16:40 by leon.

There just went the City of Cincinnati's 1.6 Billion from Norfolk Southern...

Jim

leon Wrote:
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> The bridges base pedestal collapsed from the
> combined weight of the bridge
> and the train trafdfic over time and it acted like
> a small wet cardboard box
> with 100 pounds on it. 

How does one fix it?

From all the trees in the background in the photo, am I correctly concluding that the bridge involved is one of the steel viaducts on Erlanger Hill rather than the bridge over the Ohio River itself?
 

Erector set dismantling surgery, smoke wrenches, plasma cutters, lots of bridge supporting steel frames,
wooden cribbing and smoke wrenches. 

Hopefully the both the local congressman and the FRA has been told  about this. 

So much of this is going to depend on a steel fabricator being able to supply the bridge pieces as the
upper bridge portions have been stressed for who knows how long. 



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 10/21/23 11:19 by leon.

This was the Ohio River bridge, Kentucky end near Ludlow.

When I woked for NS and we had to get trains from the Kentucky side to bring back home to Fort Wayne, I was always SCARED TO DEATH of crossing this bridge!!  It moaned and groaned and seemed to shake even if the train was lite in tonnage!!  AHH good times!! 

NKPSOUTHERN Wrote:
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> When I woked for NS and we had to get trains from
> the Kentucky side to bring back home to Fort
> Wayne, I was always SCARED TO DEATH of crossing
> this bridge!!  It moaned and groaned and seemed
> to shake even if the train was lite in tonnage!! 
> AHH good times!! 

Wow!

Is my recall correct that the bridge is double tracked? When the time comes for a replacement, I hate to think what the cost would be.

tq-07fan Wrote:
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> There just went the City of Cincinnati's 1.6
> Billion from Norfolk Southern...
>
> Jim

Maybe they might lower their offer. Lol.

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ts1457 Wrote:
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> Is my recall correct that the bridge is double
> tracked? When the time comes for a replacement, I
> hate to think what the cost would be.

Don't worry, NS has PLENTY of money to buy back their own shares & artifiically inflate their stock price.
They can afford to replace a bridge, no matter how much it costs.

Wonder if Squires laid off most of the bridge inspectors during PSR?
Jerk.

Knowing them, I would not be surprised if they single track the new bridge
next to the old one and install manual throw switches on both sides of the
river for the double track.  



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 10/21/23 17:42 by leon.

Well, if traffic was to resume at midnight, and I presume it has or there would be much news about it here on T.O., then the NS B&B crew jumped on it quick.  They must have had good access and blocked it up to allow traffic to resume.  B&B crews are a pretty resourceful bunch.  When did traffic resume?

many rail and hiway bridges are ticking time bombs waiting to go off, city of binghamton ny has a serious issues with ns bridges, 10 years ago, i picked up a train, you could throw a basket ball thru where the ballast was dropping down on passing cars, PSR, don't fix anything till it breaks, than ask for public/free bridge from the taxpayers.

Not much else about this being discussed on local sites, but traffic did resume pretty quickly.

As to the many railroad bridges around the country......
There are many monstrous railroad bridges like this around the country that are around 100 years old. Yes, they were built well but they won't last forever. A smattering have been rebuilt, but most soldier on without a huge amount of work to maintain. It does make you wonder about the future of these bridges. A major failure would be disastrous, but you know, railroads are tremendously resourceful when necessary even for huge projects such as a major bridge failure

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