Illinois Railway Museum Blog

After a week of planning, great progress was made on the turntable in the last ten days.  This is critical as site clearing will start this month and we must have the table out before this happens.

JD and Phil travelled to Denver in a truck loaded with tools and equipment and have been working with Dennis and track contractors based locally.

The table before stripping

The stages of the removal are:

1.       Remove and ship the rails, deck, railings, circle rail and everything else that can be taken from the top of the main bridge beam;

2.       Lift the main bridge beam from the pit and lay it on the railroad flat car that will carry it to Union;

3.       Take the trucks and center bearing, along with the remaining ring rails that lie under the beam and load these for transport to Union.

View of one of the drive trucks under the table

A surge of activity early last week saw everything on top of the bridge beam removed, stacked and then loaded onto 3 flatbed trailers.  By Thursday, all 3 were unloaded at Union.  Many thanks to Dave and Carl for their efforts in unloading.  Each trailer was unloaded in 45 minutes, which was an indication both of their efforts and the good work of the team in Denver ensuring that everything was carefully strapped and loaded.

First the electrical supply arch is removed

Starting to remove the walkways

The decking itself is removed

Now we have the bare bridge ready to be lifted from the pit

and the parts are already arriving at Union

Unfortunately, the weather meant that we have a future job.  Heavy rain Wednesday night meant that we could not use the long term laydown areas for rail, ties, etc. and had to locate everything for outside storage on gravel surfaces.  So there will be lot of relocating once the weather improves.  However, the electrical boxes and other sensitive items are now all in covered storage.

After this rush of activity, the guys in Denver have been preparing the oak timbers that will be used to mount the bridge onto the flatcar but have now run out of work and are returning home.

Everything is prepared with heavy lift equipment lined up to lift the bridge from the pit and onto the flatcar.  However, we must now wait for the flatcar to arrive on site, along with the idler cars that will travel under the overhanging ends of the beam.  All this is ordered and in-transit via Union Pacific to the Burnham yard but it is currently expected to be late this week before they arrive.  Once they do, there will be another rush of activity but, until then, there is nothing more that can be done.

Congratulations to Dennis and the team on a very successful job so far.  Now we all wait in anticipation of the lifting and loading operation.

Nigel