(The following article by Katie Warchut was posted on the Day website on January 12.)
NEW LONDON, Conn. — Amtrak will begin the long-anticipated replacement of the nearly 100-year-old Thames River railroad drawbridge this month.
The $76 million project will take two years to complete, beginning with work under water. It is the largest single capital improvement Amtrak will make to the Northeast Corridor during this time, Amtrak officials said.
The bridge, built in 1919, has been known to get stuck in an open or closed position, delaying train passengers on their way to New York or Boston, or barring large boats from accessing the river.
As it works now, the bascule bridge rises from a hinge at one end to make way for vessels, using a 4-million-pound counterweight. But the bridge is feeling the passage of time.
“The bridge is arthritic,” said Project Manager Peter Finch. “Its joints are very worn.”
The bridge opened about 2,500 times in 2005.
The drawbridge will be replaced by a more efficient, vertical-lift bridge, similar to bridges over the Quinnipiac River and Cape Cod Canal, Finch said. Instead of pivoting, it will rise like an elevator between two towers so that the clearance for vessels is as high as the Gold Star bridge, Finch said. It also will have a new track and walkways.
Amtrak has awarded a $60 million contract to Cianbro Corp. of Pittsfield, Maine, for the project. The rest of the project costs are for engineering design and Amtrak work forces, said Amtrak spokesman Cliff Black.
Cianbro, which also has offices in Bloomfield, set up an office trailer and started bringing materials to a staging area on the New London side of the river this week, Finch said.
The first part of the project, beginning this month, involves installing seven cables, which will control signal lights for trains crossing the river. Divers will bury the cables more than 40 feet under the channel, according to requirements set by the Army Corps of Engineers, Finch said.
It will be another month or two until construction is visible above the water line, when workers will begin modifying the bridge to handle the new structure, Finch said.
The drawbridge won’t be replaced until the fall of 2007. Over a 12-day period, a 188-foot-long, 35-foot-wide, vertical lift that weighs 1,250 tons will be floated into place on barges from Long Island Sound and attached to the bridge.
That section of Amtrak’s Northeast Corridor will be closed for four days, Amtrak officials said. They plan to use buses to carry passengers to trains traveling between New York and Boston.
Ross Capon, executive director of the National Association of Railroad passengers, a private, pro-railroad lobbying group, said the replacement has been long overdue.
“They’re still, in a sense, in a race with time,” he said. “It has lasted way past its expected lifetime. The proliferation of recreational boat traffic is way above what it was designed for.”
The project is the first of three major bridge replacements Amtrak plans over the next 10 years. The others are the moveable Niantic River Bridge and the Pattagansett/Miamicock River fixed bridge in Niantic.
Work on the Niantic River Bridge is scheduled to begin in 2007.