CN earns first Hay award for pivotal Louisiana bridge project
12/2/2021
The American Railway Engineering and Maintenance-of-Way Association (AREMA) created the Dr. William W. Hay Award for Excellence in 1999 to honor rail infrastructure projects that best address safety, innovation and service performance reliability. The annual award is named after the late William Walter Hay, a longtime AREMA contributor and professor of railway civil engineering at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign.
CN has completed tens of thousands of projects over the past 22 years, and one of them has finally earned the Class I’s first Hay trophy. The railroad recently won the 2021 Hay award for the new McComb-Bonnet Carre Spillway Bridge that was completed last year near New Orleans.
The $90 million project involved the construction of an 11,712-foot concrete trestle bridge in the body of Lake Pontchartrain. The replacement of the longest timber trestle in North America — which was built in 1934 — was CN’s largest engineering endeavor involving a bridge.
OCCI Inc. served as the general contractor for the bridge, which is designed to last more than a century. CN crews completed the cutover to the reconstructed McComb-Bonnet Carre Spillway Bridge on Nov. 23, 2020.
The bridge serves as a key structure for freight and passenger trains to cross the spillway, which alleviates excess water from the Mississippi River to protect New Orleans and other communities from flooding.
The replacement of North America’s longest timber trestle near New Orleans was CN’s largest engineering endeavor involving a bridge. CN“The new bridge is more durable, which increases safety for our teams managing the track and operational efficiency. In addition, the reconstructed bridge is expected to increase safety, fluidity and velocity, getting goods where they need to be faster and more efficiently,” said CN Vice President of Engineering Raj Gupta in an online project summary.
CN needed to adjust work timelines in 2020 because of six hurricanes and tropical storms that struck the area. The Class I also faced construction challenges posed by historic spillway openings and the global pandemic, yet experienced few train delays associated with the project.
“Thanks to our team expertise and dedication, the project was successfully completed, and without a single personal injury to CN personnel,” said Sandro Scola, the Class Is assistant chief engineer for bridges and structures.
CN won the award because the project helped advance railway engineering design and construction, including enhanced safety for crews and operations, innovative practices, and improved efficiency and reliability, according to AREMA.
The project addressed significant deterioration of the existing timber trestle, which was nearing the end of its service life, and enabled CN to lift permanent speed and load operating restrictions on the bridge, AREMA officials said in an award announcement.
The project also sparked creativity and innovation, including the use of unique contractor-developed, multi-functional bridge building equipment, they added.
Video courtesy of CN
CN McComb Bonnet Carre Spillway Bridge Construction from CN on Vimeo.
