Shaping up bridge for second 100 years; CSXT's Schuylkill River bridge in Philadelphia carries heavy volumes of traffic, but needed rehab to do the job into a second century

Railway Track and Structures, Oct, 2004 by Tom Judge

"You have a lot of difficulty with those," Ligato pointed out. "There are serious geometry issues. You can imagine dealing with compound and complex angles, as opposed to just 90 degrees or 45 degrees, in the construction. Early in the last century they had to take what the river gave them."

During a typical outage, work would start about 7 a.m. Sunday, for example, and continue until 7 p.m. Monday. Then the bridge would have to be back in operation to give 12 hours of running time. After that, the work crews went back in to do it again for 36 hours.

The work entailed not only the removal and replacement of track, but also steel ties, the underlayment or decking, also mechanical and hydraulic componentry, as well as the signal componentry, the electricals, and all the elements that make a bridge open and close happen.

"The combination of CSXT people in Jacksonville and Philadelphia and our operation and GWP group were about as well coordinated and collegial as I could say," Ligato pointed out. "There's always a lot of tension, a lot to lose, a lot of careers if not made can be broken if this kind of thing goes badly. It's real high-wire-walking, high-risk enterprise for everybody, not just from a financial standpoint, but careers and politics and all that stuff. It was as collegial and fraternal as it can get when everyone has budgets and bosses, and profit and loss. CSXT people were great to work with, considerate of our company, but balanced nicely their own interests and I think we did the same, as did GWP. It was a pretty stunning team effort.

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"We have a good relationship with CSXT," he said. "We did Three-Mile Bridge in Mobile, Ala., during a recent Jamboree. I think our product is on about a dozen of their bridges right now. They were the first to recognize the future in this product in movable bridges and they acted as stalwart yeomen in support of our efforts. CSXT put a lot of faith in us to not only let us build the product, but also general manage and install it.

"I've been hearing about partnering during my 30 years in the industry, but I've seen darn little of it," Ligato noted. "But I can tell that this was a good example of the best of a big company and the best of a little company coming together to accomplish a task. We feel very strongly that the folks at CSXT not only know how to manage their own situation, but also how to work with and manage their vendors.

"The railroad industry has probably been one of the last groups to downsize and buy critical services outside," he said. "They are probably one of the most vertically integrated industries in this country. Projects such as this one show that the railroad industry can rely on its vendors, nurturing and cultivating them to perform critical-path tasks and operations for them. It has to be joint effort. We can only be as good a vendor as our customer will let us and vice versa."

by Tom Judge, editor