(The following story by Matt Oliver appeared on the Omaha World-Herald website on September 28, 2009.)
BOONE, Iowa —After nearly three years of construction, the Union Pacific Railroad’s new high bridge west of Boone is finally open for operation.
A dedication ceremony is scheduled for Thursday.
Work on the high bridge, which is adjacent to the Kate Shelley High Bridge, began in November 2006.
Omaha-based HDR Engineering provided the engineering for the construction of the bridge.
A few weather roadblocks and technical difficulties delayed the bridge’s completion date.
The bridge’s final structural components were put into place in April and the railroad tracks were completed in time for the first train to steam over the new bridge on Aug. 20. The structure is now one of the highest two-track railroad bridges in North America, stretching 2,800 feet in length at an elevation of 190 feet.
“The old one, when it was built, was considered the longest and highest in the world but we haven’t really checked every other railroad to see,” said Brenda Mainwaring, UP director of public affairs for Iowa and Nebraska.
The previous high bridge utilized by the UP was built 108 years ago. Although the bridge contained double tracks, the overall speed of rail traffic crossing the bridge was slow.
“The old bridge had a speed restriction of 25 miles per hour which essentially created a choke point where we had to slow traffic down,” Mainwaring said. “Although it had double tracks, it was more than 100 years old, it was built in 1901 so it didn’t carry the traffic at the speed that we wanted it to.”
With the new bridge, Mainwaring said that trains can cross the bridge at up to 70 miles per hour.