Steel in the News
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Posted by Tasha Weiss on June 18, 2012 at 5:04 PM.
Bridge engineering firm Modjeski and Masters captures a movable steel bridge replacement project in its new web video, “The Long Journey.” The video follows a rehabilitated Houma, La. lift-span bridge as it’s dismantled, loaded onto barges and shipped nearly 400 miles down the Intracoastal Waterway to its new home in Freeport, Texas.
Replacing the Freeport, Texas swing-span bridge with the lift-span bridge solved two critical challenges at the same time. The Freeport bridge, at nearly a century old, needed to meet today’s increasing load capacity requirements for rail traffic, while the more modern Houma bridge sat idle for nearly two decades and could handle increased requirements.
The video features footage and insights from the project team as they confront structural and engineering challenges with the Houma bridge relocation and replacement. It also highlights a temporary bobtail design solution that was used to maintain swing span functionality, without impacting rail or marine traffic, until the Freeport bridge was replaced.
You can watch the video on YouTube: http://bit.ly/KI0Ywy.
