| Last updated on November 3, 2020
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As an alternate route, the Surface Transportation Board on Friday granted NS trackage rights on a parallel Kansas City Southern line between Kansas City and Mexico, Mo.
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I think Indiana is hostile to the rail industry in general.
As a retired NS signal maintainer, all I’m going to say is NS used to be a lot more proactive about removing drift and debris from damming up against their bridges. Additionally, I’d like to point out this bridge survived the flood of ’93 with no damage whatsoever.
I know times have changed and there are now different laws in effect that probably weren’t around in the early ’90s, but I can’t help but surmise that cutting maintenance cost$ probably had more to do with the destruction of this bridge than the railroad will ever admit.
Several years ago when involved with the NS relocation in the Lafayette, Indiana area the Division Engineer told me that the structure at the east end of the yard had been impacted with debris and NS M of W got busy and removed it. Then the State of Indiana filed claim against them as first, no permit, and second, could not get into the stream to do the work and fined the railroad big bucks for protecting their bridge.
Mr Morris: I recall NS and KCS had already agreed to a deal. They then asked the STB to approve the deal.
“As an alternate route, the Surface Transportation Board on Friday granted NS trackage rights on a parallel Kansas City Southern line between Kansas City and Mexico, Mo.”
What exactly does this mean? I’m under the impression that the STB is forcing the KCS to allow competitor traffic on their rails? What does the KCS get?
Will the new bridge have improved resistance to log-jams?
So, did they salvage the girders out of the river and are reusing them, or did they get new ones?
Peter Stevenson, do you realize the railroads have no authority to remove debris from rivers? That it’s the responsibility of other parties, either a state entity or the Army Corp of Engineers if a navigable waterway…NS could do nothing about the debris that floated down river with the flood waters.
Improved resistance to log-jams was previously known as preventative maintenance to pluck the crap out of the river before it dams up. Not going to happen in these PSR days, they were lucky to actually get a rail saw to the location before it took out more of the structure than it already did. Let it happen, reroute, and use investor dollars to rebuild is the new legit way to avoid irresponsible (to investors) scheduled replacements.
Great news much faster than I anticipated
Mr. Winegar, purely guessing here, but I bet they are starting from scratch with new steel. Usually easier to just scrap the old and order new for what you need to replace it. The time involved in redoing the old stuff isn’t worth any savings.