Obsolete railcars are getting a reprieve from the scrapper’s torch to serve as vital road links in an area of North Carolina ravaged by Hurricane Helene.
The North Carolina Department of Transportation and Innovative Bridge Co. are installing retired flatcars as a quick fix to temporarily replace road bridges damaged or destroyed by the storm this past September.
IBC, based in Pearl, Miss., has so far installed more than 40 railcar bridges in seven counties.
The company typically installs 180-200 such bridges each year, handling jobs from Texas to Pennsylvania. This was its first disaster response job.
The railcar bridges, paved and with railings installed, are one-third the cost of a typical temporary bridge.
The NCDOT expects to have all bridge reconstruction projects under contract by the end of March and all spans rebuilt within two years. A short video on the project is available here.
— This article originally appeared at Freightwaves.com
“Next Road – Any Load”!
Thanks to the railroads who donated old flatcars, one lane beats no lane!
Only one lane, but yes still a bridge!
On one of the fine golf courses at Kohler, Wisc. an old C&NW flatcar bridges a creek. I believe it has its trucks, couplers, and tho’ rusty the logo and lettering is clearly visible. The Kohler Co. factory is on the branch line from Sheboygan, which used to run West to Fond du Lac. Fairly recently, for some reason. the track was relaid as far as Plymouth, where the old Milw. Rd. and C&NW depots still stand side by side. Unusually, Plymouth was served by a 3rd road. a TMER&L line coming West from Sheboygan and continuing on to the resort town of Elkhart Lake. Wm. Middleton observed that Elkhart Lake was the farthest West one could ride an interurban continuously from the East coast. Traces of both steam and electric ROWs are visible West of Plymouth.
Thanks for the historical perspective. I would like to add that the rail line from Plymouth to Sheboygan Falls was rebuilt some years ago and is now part of Wisconsin & Southern which reaches Plymouth from Milwaukee via Saukville and Fredonia (the former Milwaukee Road.) I am told they do a pretty good amount of business on a line that was once threatened with abandonment north of Saukville, when then-current owner CN deemed it surplus.
As for TMER&L, it reached Sheboygan until 1940 and Port Washington until 1948. Today it is the Interurban Trail, at least in Ozaukee County. This line ran parallel to the Milwaukee Road from west Glendale to Grafton, then went northeast to Port Washington. North of “Port”, it came along the east side of the C&NW Shoreline and ran beside it well into Sheboygan County.