Tabla de contenidos para Big Projects en Big Projects

WELCOME TO ‘BIG PROJECTS,’ our look at bridges, tunnels, and other infrastructure undertakings that have changed the face of railroading. We also look at a few projects which are desperately needed, not just for their impact on the rail industry, or even transportation, but the U.S. economy as a whole. The projects in this magazine are, for the most part, epic in scope. They include the world’s longest railroad tunnel, a spectacular New York bridge built with great care to minimize the impact on a state park, and two significant capacity-improvement projects that unplugged bottlenecks on BNSF Railway’s Southern Transcon, a virtual conveyor belt for the U.S. import and export industries. There are also looks at two Northeast Corridor tunnels that were remarkable feats in their day, but have reached…

A visit to Letchworth State Park in western New York takes visitors into the shadows of one of today’s most visually documented railroad projects in the Northeast: Norfolk Southern’s Genesee Arch Bridge. At 963 feet long and 235 feet above the Upper Falls of the Genesee River, the modern arch viaduct spans a gorge steeped in history and abundant natural beauty. As early railroads expanded, and crossed uncharted terrains, getting from point A to point B was achieved in the most cost-effective manner, rarely considering the impact to nature. The new arch bridge’s construction, by contrast, is elaborate, eco-conscious, and sleek. It is built on an alignment 75 feet south of an older bridge dating to 1875, and is a single-track crossing with a ballast-filled concrete deck. The main span…

COMPLEXITY. It is almost assured when working in the nation’s capital. It is, after all, the heart of the national government, a historic city held near and dear by virtually all citizens. Life must go on each day for all of the cogs in the national machine. Further, what disruptions do occur need to take in to account all of the history that preceded them. No tavern, no paving stone, no cherry tree elsewhere is more sacred than any in the capital. In spite of this, CSX and its contractors brought change to Washington, D.C., with a new, enlarged Virginia Avenue Tunnel, which was completed in July 2018 after 44 months of construction. The need was readily apparent: railroads derive their competitive advantage through operating efficiencies, and running single-stacked containers…

The statistic most associated with the Gotthard Base Tunnel is this: the bore under the Swiss Alps is 57 kilometers (35.4 miles) long, making it the world’s longest rail tunnel. As with most aspects of this epic construction project, it’s not quite that simple. The Swiss Federal Railways’ shortcut under the mountains actually involved some 94.4 miles of tunneling. It also required 12.3 billion Swiss francs ($13.39 billion, at September 2020 exchange rates), up to 2,600 workers at once, some inventive engineering, and, unfortunately, nine lives. Little wonder, then, that it was a 17-year process. The task ended Dec. 11, 2016, when the tunnel went into regular service, six months after its formal opening ceremony. The historic Gotthard Pass line, an engineering marvel of its own when it opened in…

One of the most telling benchmarks of modern railroad management is the ability to stay ahead of predicted traffic growth by dramatically upgrading right-of-way infrastructure. Put another way, it’s knowing the bottom line means increasing capacity on key routes. To accommodate an ever-increasing traffic flow between Pacific Rim countries and the United States, BNSF Railway realized a decade ago it had to clear up potential bottlenecks on its former Santa Fe Los Angeles-Chicago transcon. One of the most significant of these bottlenecks was Cajon Pass. Notice the use of past tense. Starting in 2007, the railroad began a long-anticipated project to triple-track the remaining 15-mile section of its Cajon Subdivision between Keenbrook on the south and Summit, atop Cajon Pass. It would be the final engineering push that would cap…

Great nations build. From the aqueducts of ancient Rome to the 19,000-mile high speed rail network of 21st-century China, flourishing economies make their mark in monuments of civil engineering. But in the United States, such projects have also become monuments to high costs and complex regulations, making them ever harder to complete—or even start. It has not always been this way. Completion of the Erie Canal in 1825 began the great building era of the United States. Connecting Lake Erie with the Hudson River, it made New York City a center of world trade and spurred a canal construction boom that lasted until barges were outcompeted by wooden boxcars. Later that century, the transcontinental railroad set off a social revolution not seen again until the internet age more than 100…

For most of the 110 years since the tunnels under the Hudson River were built by the Pennsylvania Railroad, they worked just fine. They were well planned, well engineered, and well constructed. Then events beyond the imagination of those who built the tunnels changed everything—making them the subject of an urgent effort to construct a replacement, as well as an ongoing political battle. The change came Oct. 29, 2012. Superstorm Sandy struck New Jersey and New York City, quickly flooding the tunnel’s twin tubes, with saltwater rising above the rails. The water coated the ballast with corrosive chlorides, damaged electrical and mechanical systems, and left cracks in concrete walls. The storm crippled a key part of the Northeast Corridor, a short but essential conduit that was already straining to handle…

Jay Groppe’s neighbors weren’t pleased. The southern Dallas County resident and wife Kathy, who own 59 acres surrounding their home and barn near Lancaster, Texas, had signed an option for Texas Central Partners LLC to purchase a half-acre on the western edge of their property. That’s where an arrow-straight, northsouth elevated right-of-way will host Japanese-built Shinkansen trains traveling up to 205 mph between downtown Dallas and Houston’s northwest side. “We had hell to pay with some of the neighbors for even consorting with Texas Central,” Groppe tells Trains on a tour of his land in late July. “They stopped talking to us—as if we were responsible for bringing the train through.” But Jordan Riness, the railroad’s right-of-way acquisition director, negotiated a price that was twice the parcel’s appraised value, according…

A long the Northeast Corridor, where the dangerously decrepit Hudson River tunnels are media superstars, Amtrak’s Baltimore & Potomac Tunnel is the B-list celebrity struggling for attention. It predates the Manhattanentry tubes by nearly four decades, and is also in serious need of replacement. Water undermines the B&P Tunnel floor, seeps through tunnel walls and leaks from utility lines, while cracks and chips mar its bricks and mortar. As is the case with the Hudson tunnels, a plan exists to replace the B&P Tunnel—one which would have cost $4.5 billion when selected by the Federal Railroad Administration in 2017—but so far, not a shovel has been turned. Prior to 2020’s COVID-19 pandemic, more than 140 trains each weekday squeezed through the two-track tunnel, just south of Baltimore Penn Station. That…

NOT IN MY BACKYARD. The unofficial rallying cry of opposition—to anything from low-cost housing to a railroad line—has made NIMBY a familiar acronym and led to the expectation that someone, somewhere, will oppose almost every effort to build or expand. Railroads and transit agencies are well aware that if financial and environmental considerations don’t slow their plans, NIMBYism often will. A 2018 New York Times article, “How ‘Not in My Backyard’ became ‘Not in My Neighborhood,’” by Emily Badger, traces the growth of the conviction that “owning a parcel of land gives [homeowners] a right to shape the world beyond its boundaries.” It cites factors including tax laws, integration, zoning, and the increased significance of housing as a financial asset. These led to what Dartmouth economist William Fischel called a…

It is impossible to drive into Fresno along Highway 99—the freeway that long has been the transportation backbone from Sacramento down California’s San Joaquin Valley to Bakersfield—and not see evidence that something big is being built. Driving south from Madera, an agricultural burg that once was the terminus of a 63-mile log flume that brought logs down from Sierra Nevada forests to the railroad for shipment to lumber mills, you’ll cross the San Joaquin River. It’s impossible to miss the twin arches of a nearly mile-long viaduct on your immediate left that leaps the river and then the Union Pacific in a single bound. In downtown Fresno, UP is using a shoofly track while a grade-separation project on Tulare Street proceeds. South of the city, you’ll pass beneath the Cedar…

NOT FAR FROM TEXAS CENTRAL’S PLANNED ROUTE, upscale passenger trains, catering principally to Dallas-Houston business travelers, once traveled tracks formerly owned by the Southern Pacific or joint Rock Island-Fort Worth & Denver rails. In fact, the path the high speed line hopes to shadow for 9 miles out of northwest Houston dates from 1856, built by a near-namesake, the Houston & Texas Central, which later was absorbed by SP’s Texas & New Orleans subsidiary. The streamlined Sunbeam once carded a 4-hour, 25-minute running time on that route, but it and its slower companion, the Hustler, were cancelled in the mid-1950s. The Rock Island’s Twin Star Rocket and Burlington’s Sam Houston Zephyr, operating round trips as a morning and afternoon tag team in as little as 4 hours, ran for another…

AUGUST 2005 BEFORE PROJECT BEGINS DECEMBER 2008 PROJECT BEGINS JUNE 2009 EARTH-MOVING CONTINUES DECEMBER 2010 ROADBED AND BRIDGES TAKE SHAPE MARCH 2011 TRACK LAYING BEGINS JULY 2011 PROJECT COMPLETE, TRAINS ROLLING…