Louisiana

NS Forces Collaborate to Keep Longest Bridge in Shape

January 2020

At 5.8 miles long, Norfolk Southern’s Lake Pontchartrain Bridge in Louisiana is the longest railroad bridge in the country and the longest railroad bridge over water in the world. Packed with 180 million pounds of concrete and 102 miles of steel and concrete pilings, it is a major rail thoroughfare of the South, with freight and passenger trains traversing it daily between Slidell and the port of New Orleans.

Train tonnage is not the only weight this bridge carries. It also bears the extreme Louisiana heat, humidity, wind, salt, water, and sun. The bridge has weathered many storms, including the wrath of Hurricane Katrina in 2005, when teams of our workers rallied in the aftermath to reconstruct the mangled bridge’s track and ballast in an impressive 16 days.

These extreme climate factors make regular maintenance of the bridge imperative to keep it intact and trains on the track, and ensuring this crucial span’s operability poses a challenge unlike any other bridge on our system.

Our T&S-1 super tie and surfacing gang recently proved themselves up to the task. For just over a week in late December, the gang’s roughly 65 members – some of our finest Engineering Department employees – converged on the bridge to replace over 8,500 railroad ties. The overhaul was the first of this magnitude since the post-Katrina rebuild, and the project required all hands on deck. With skill and grit, the T&S-1 crew worked methodically to overhaul the bridge.

Because the New Orleans climate is more humid than most places across our network, ties weather more rapidly. To increase tie life on the bridge, NS uses dual-treated ties designed to increase their longevity by up to 10 years. No matter the primary treatment material – copper naphthenate or creosote – the ties also are treated with life-extending borate. “The borate penetrates the center of the tie while the creosote or copper naphthenate protects the shell,” explains John Fleps, AVP maintenance of way and structures.

T&S-1 is deemed a “super” tie gang because of the increased variety and type of track equipment used. However, in addition to the standard equipment and materials needed to repair and replace ties – such as tie-handling machines, ballast tampers, spike pullers, trucks and cranes – this open-water job required help from watercraft.

Flanking tugboats assisted in the delivery and disposal of scrap materials to a nearby barge, and, as a precaution, NS brought in lifeboats for fall protection that followed the gang as it worked the bridge. While safety is always top of mind on the railroad, the gang’s awareness for their own personal safety and each other’s was heightened because of the limited space beside the track.

Norfolk Southern

The New Union Station of the New Orleans Terminal Co.

The American Architect — January 1909

On Canal street, the main business thoroughfare of New Orleans, and close to the commercial center of the city, is the new Union station of the New Orleans Terminal Co. The station building is 82 feet wide by 235 feet long. The work was commenced in midsummer, 1907, and is now practically complete. This may be cited as an example of the rapidity of modern building construction. Well-organized methods, mechanical skill and executive ability are accomplishing remarkable results throughout the country, and the fact that a structure of this magnitude, from its beginning to its completion, can be safely and satisfactorily erected in less than eighteen months is a matter worthy of note.

The architecture of the building, as will be seen, is a sane adaptation of the modern French. The building typifies in a large sense the purpose for which it was erected, and in this respect teaches, in a quiet way, a lesson to more pretentious structures erected for a similar purpose. The problem of the adaption of design to purpose, location and climate is often difficult. We feel that in the present instance, the results achieved are eminently satisfactory. The setting of the building is such that the architectural excellence of its lines can be viewed to good advantage. On each side of this terminal there is a street 45 feet in width, while the main façade faces a wide parked approach, some two blocks long.

Through the main entrance, the archway of which is 30 feet wide by 40 feet high, the traveler enters the main waiting room. This room is 40 feet wide, 80 feet long, and has a clear height to the central dome of 52 feet. On the side streets there are arched entrances 3o feet high. As will be seen by reference to the plans, this waiting room is accessible on all sides by large open- ings, thus providing the most desirable feature in railway terminals, ease of ingress and egress by large num- bers without undue crowding and confusion during the so-called "rush hours" of daily traffic.

Centrally through the building is the main waiting-room lobby, while grouped on each side are the various rooms and offices necessary to the prompt and efficient transaction of passenger railway service. The concourse, placed at the end of the waiting room, has exits to the side streets to avoid interference with outgoing traffic. It is 80 feet long by 35 feet wide. The foundation, the setting of which was much complicated by the necessity of taking care of an old drainage canal, some 22 feet in width and which runs length-wise under the building, is of concrete on piling.

The lower courses of the Canal street exterior and the main structure on the side streets are of granite, the upper of Bedford stone. The remainder of the building is of brick and stone. The brick used is of a specially made gray color harmonizing with the stone, the ensemble being a most restful and artistic result. The interior construction of the main waiting room shows a central dome, from which barrel vaults extend to eath of the four sides of the room.

To a height of 12 feet above the floor, the side walls are finished in marble; above is cement, in imitation of stone, treated to harmonize with the marble. Here, again, one notices the satisfactory treatment of color values and the restful character of the tones employed. The floor of the main waiting room is mosaic tiled, as are also the smaller waiting rooms and offices. These smaller rooms have plaster walls.

The main waiting room has a steel frame to carry the dome and attic roof. To adapt this to the floor plan and superstructure was an interesting engineering problem. The solution has been to support this steel frame at four points only, the supporting columns being symmetrically placed as indicated on the first floor plans. Reference to the sectional view of waiting room will show that these four points are well within the lines of the attic walls, and these are carried by cantilever members and suitable girders. Above these girders, and resting on them, are the steel roof trusses, of which there are six — three in each direction. These carry a concrete roof 6 inches thick, including a skim coat of 1 inch, the concrete spans being arched between I-beam purlins as shown.

There are four tracks entering the station. These are protected by inverted umbrella sheds, 704 feet long. The cast-iron supporting columns are anchored to concrete blocks. The tracks are separated from the streets by an ornamental iron fence.

Messrs. D. H. Burnham & Co., of Chicago, were the architects of the building.

The American Architect and Building News #95 — January 1909 — Public Domain