I just located this photo I took in 2003. I appears that the next pier over has been repaired in a similar way. Notice how the lower corner above the concrete fill is missing. Geez, they better replace this one too.
Looks like a stone pier at right. Old bridge. Old enough they may need to do more than a repair. Perhaps a total replacement, in the future?
It seem to look as if there must be a pretty strong current going thru area there to erode the bank as it is and cause the one pylon to sink a bit! Nice drop off!
Two months ago we had another flood. The water crested about 4 foot lower but was plenty high to soak the river bank far up the side. The compacted sediment that makes up the river bank did not have much time to dry out and regain much of its stability so when the water rose again it just scoured it away. To add to the problem, in the 130 years since the piers were installed, the river channel has moved much close to the pier that failed and the direction of the current changed so that the pier was not parallel to the flow. The water was hitting the broad side of the piers at an angle causing a lot more turbulence, increasing the scouring action. Where the river bank supported the east pier, their was not much left. The water ate way down along the pier and eventually undermined it. The alluvial sediment at this location is over a quarter mile deep before you hit bedrock so sinking piles that deep was never an option. It will be interesting to see how far down the pier actually goes.
I have not been able to find any of my photos that show the bad pier before it failed. The vegetation was always so dense around it you could not see it from the other side of the river. I don't believe I took any photos back in 1994 when a friend and I hiked in to the other side. He had just joined our NTRAK club and was real gun ho about building a module. He wanted to build one with the bridge so I volunteered to help him. We decided to hike in from a pick nick area about a mile back along the track. After passing the No Trespassing signs, the thick vegetation closed in right up to the edge of the ballast so we were in violation I guess cause there was nowhere to walk but right along the side of the right of way. If a train came we planned on diving into the jungle. We made it all the way to the bridge and checked it out as best as we could. I slid down the bank to the rivers edge and checked out the old pilings sticking out of the mud left over from the first iron bridge built over the river in 1868. They were around the second pier which at that time was at the water's edge. The first pier was still quite solidly encased in the vegetation covered river bank above. While I was down by the water in the mud an east bound SP freight came through Richmond and crossed the bridge. Jim did not want to be seen so climbed under the trestle to hide. When I climbed back up I found him splattered with something that was dripping from one of the tank cars. Fortunately I don't think it was caustic or toxic. He survived, at least until he moved away 8 years later. That is when I decided to built a module featuring the bridge that he never built. At that time, I took a bunch of photos from the other side of the river but as you can see, you can't really see much.
Its still sinking. From Tuesday morning to Friday afternoon you can see some change in the level of the pier by the angle of the bridge span and especially the angle of the trestle section.
According to UP, the bridge will reopen by the end of the month. This is a big operating headache for them. Half the trains are being rerouted south towards Alvin, and the other half up north thru Hearne.
There were like thirty trucks lined up along Highway 90 waiting to unload huge chunks of stone. Here a back hoe is shoving some around on the river bank.
When they were doing some remote-ish rip rap work around here they built huge boxes of stone contained by what can best be described as super-chicken-wire. They then airlifted the completed boxes into place with a helicopter.
I got to the museum early today so that I could watch Amtrak back up onto the BNSF and head south to Alvin.
A lot has happened since Friday. After driving some piles and adding all kinds of bracing they placed the big yellow plate girders on cribbing and used them to jack the bridge sections up off the sunken pier. Maybe now they will demolish the old pier and replace it? Will just have to wait to see what happens next. Looks like they are sinking new piling for a second bridge at the same time. They had planned to double track all this sometime in the future so I guess they just bumped up the schedule. We will see.
It's amazing how quickly these kinds of projects get done. They probably already had plans prepared for the 'how', it's just the 'when' that got moved up.
This would make a really interesting documentary type of film. Certainly for the general public, and possibly for professionals in engineering, etc.
