CSX - Escambia Bay Bridge
Facts
- Overview
- Raised railroad bridge over Escambia Bay on CSX Railroad
- Location
- Pensacola, Santa Rosa County, Florida, and Escambia County, Florida
- Status
- Open to traffic
- History
- Built 1989
- Builder
- - Johnson Construction Co. of Minneapolis, Minnesota
- Railroads
- - CSX Railroad (CSX)
- Seaboard System Railroad (SBD)
- Approximate latitude, longitude
- +30.52425, -87.14512 (decimal degrees)
30°31'27" N, 87°08'42" W (degrees°minutes'seconds") - Approximate UTM coordinates
- 16/486077/3376887 (zone/easting/northing)
- Quadrangle map:
- Pace
- Inventory number
- BH 49088 (Bridgehunter.com ID)
Update Log
- June 24, 2012: New photos from Calvin Sneed
- February 10, 2012: New Street View added by Daniel Hopkins
- February 10, 2012: Updated by Calvin Sneed: We've had this discussion before...A spokesperson for the company says "CSX Railroad" is a division of CSXT, but the railroad division is still called "CSX. Railroad"
Related Bridges
- CSX - Escambia Bay Bridge (Old) (Predecessor)
Sources
- Calvin Sneed - us43137415 [at] yahoo [dot] com
- Daniel Hopkins - chimera [at] clovermail [dot] net
Comments
I was on the erection crew that built this bridge.
This was one of the fondest memories of my youth,
There were 6 erectors, 1 crane operator & the supervisor,,, his name was Curly. What a great time to be alive, the world was a different place back then.
The precast concrete segmental railroad bridge was put in service at the end of May 1988 with the dedication ceremory occurring on June 4, 1988. I believe it remains the only precast segmental bridge carrying freight railroad loadings in the US. The bridge is 11,648 feet long and consists of 110 simply supported 100 ft long spans, a three span continuous section over the navigation channel (100ft-170ft-100ft) and 13 each 24 ft long trestle spans on the Milton, FL end. Near the east end, several of the spans are cast as curved spans. Construction of the project began in June of 1985. A precast yard was established on the west side of the bridge and construction progressed from west to east. After the bridge was placed in service, the former bridge was removed. The bridge tenders house is now located at the RR museum in Milton, FL. The former through truss swing span became scrap metal. The timber trestle was removed and timber piling pulled.
Right or wrong, I have always just called them CSX. That's what it says on their engines. See: http://cmpakarlsen.files.wordpress.com/2010/02/csx5502.jpg
It's just CSX, while the full company name is CSX Transportation CSXT is primarily used as reporting marks (the railroad initials usually above the road number and other data on the side of a rail car.) on rail cars due to the fact that in terms of railroad reporting marks an X suffix indicates a private (shipper owned) owned car.
This page's URL is http://bridgehunter.com/fl/santa-rosa/bh49088/
I was not the designer of record but I designed this bridge top to bottom while working for Figg & Muller Engineers, Inc.in 1983. I'd been out of school for 2 years. It is indeed the only precast segmental bridge in the country designed for heavy rail, E80 loading. The above info is correct except the total length was 11,370'. I recall the wind design loading was 150 mph winds. It was also designed to withstand storm surges and waves which actually happened during hurricane Ivan. I believe the surge was ~15' with waves another 7 or 8 ft. Some of the end spans were completely covered during the storm yet it rode it out fine. I do know that during construction they had to upsize and increase the pile lengths as the test piles didn't show enough capacity. (Sometimes geotechs get it wrong!)