Bridge too low for CSX trains in Delaware

DUH

"Teachable moment" at the taxpayers expense.  A totally stupid, typical comment from a bureaucrat.

So you measure a clearance for a train from the ground, not from the top of the rails?  I guess there was a day of engineering school missed for someone there.

hokie71 posted:

Interesting aw......you know what!

Close enough for gub'mint work.

Should have asked Joe Biden for input on the project.  He's from Delaware and loves trains, dontcha know?

Nick Chillianis posted:

hokie71 posted:

Interesting aw......you know what!

Close enough for gub'mint work.

Should have asked Joe Biden for input on the project.  He's from Delaware and loves trains, dontcha know?

 

With Biden, as long as the little guy waving the lantern pops out and doesn't hit the train, he's fine with it.

Not the first time this has happened. I seem to recall that when the engineering firm was building the BART system, they did the same thing, i.e. measured from the ground instead of the top of the rails. Thus, the tunnel under SanFrancisco Bay to Oakland had have the track lower a bit, prior to the big grand opening.

THose guys deal in hand grenades and horse shoes- close counts. Hey !  What's a few inches ??

I heard they did the same error in Niagara Falls replacing an overpass. I couldn't confirm it.

Happens all the time... First time double stacks where hauled on the ex Northern Pacific route by the BN in Lombard Montana, they tore the Milwaukee railroad bridge right of its bridge abutments.  The overpass was long abandoned.

All ya gots ta do is let some air out of the tires...

Rusty

Engineer-Joe posted:

I heard they did the same error in Niagara Falls replacing an overpass. I couldn't confirm it.

NIAGARA FALLS!  Slowly I turned!!!

Eddie Marra posted:

Engineer-Joe posted:

I heard they did the same error in Niagara Falls replacing an overpass. I couldn't confirm it.

NIAGARA FALLS!  Slowly I turned!!!

I can't believe you beat me to this. Great minds think alike.

Do you know that bit dates back to the earliest days of vaudeville and has at least a half dozen variations?

Besides the Niagara Falls version,  Abbott and Costello performed the "Susquehanna Hat Company" version on their 1950's TV show.

hokie71 posted:

...the DelDOT survey team “mistakenly measured the clearance for the span from the ground rather than from the top of the tracks’ steel rails.”

You have GOT to be kidding me! Have we actually become that stupid?

Good grief...

Yes, THEY have  !! A really big low bridge boo-boo happened in Pittsburgh many years ago when the PRR built a bridge over the Allegheny River in to the city. AFTER they built it, the Army Corps of Engineers decided it was too low for the stacks on river boats to clear.  The end result was they jacked up this really big bridge with big hydraulic jacks and added concrete caps  2-3 ft. thick on top of the piers and abutments.  The bridge is there, used every day.  This was more a  difference of opinion than a mistake.

OGR Webmaster posted:

hokie71 posted:

...the DelDOT survey team “mistakenly measured the clearance for the span from the ground rather than from the top of the tracks’ steel rails.”

You have GOT to be kidding me! Have we actually become that stupid?

Elevations for railroad grades usually are at ground level and not the tops of the rails, and many people not in the know think of it like they would for a roadway, where the elevation should be able to be taken as correct.

When I was still in the military, a contractor on a post I was serving at was hired to build a new engine house and they followed the instruction to the letter. The problem was, the same thing happened and nobody accounted for the added height of the roadbed, ties and rail. Locomotives could fit inside but it was so tight it literally scraped the paint off the tops of the fans the first time they pulled a GP into it. In that case, it was a minor subcontract to make the doors about a foot taller and cut the difference out of the openings.

That's when I first was told about this being a relatively common thing in the field, for that reason.

So when I read this story elsewhere this morning, I wasn't the least bit surprised. It's an issue of a common frame of reference, as the railroad folks (and companies who deal with them a lot) normally know this, but next to nobody else does.

As for the old Lombard MT bridge, that was hit by some fiber optic cable support equipment on a train passing down the old NP main. It's not the same thing as that bridge had been built in accordance with the requirements of the age. There were no trains that tall when they were built.

OGR Webmaster posted:

hokie71 posted:

...the DelDOT survey team “mistakenly measured the clearance for the span from the ground rather than from the top of the tracks’ steel rails.”

You have GOT to be kidding me! Have we actually become that stupid?

Good grief...

Yes, we have, Charlie Brown!

Shouldn't CSX have been involved in reviewing the initial bridge design before it was built?

Without knowing what occurred when the DelDot Engineering Department approved construction drawings, if questions arose about height elevation or clearance dimension measured from what reference point the CSX Mechanical or Engineering Department should have been contacted for clarification.  All of the freight and passenger car general arrangement drawings that I have ever seen had all vertical dimensions measure from top of rail(TOR) for heavy and light cars, not from roadbed grade.

I can just see the DelDOT crew doing the measurements and lowest guy on the totem pole saying  "I think you made a mistake".