advertisement

---

North Carolina Railroad Co. (NCRR) and Norfolk Southern Railway recently contracted Faulconer Construction Co. to replace the Highway 54 railroad bridge in Raleigh, N.C.

Scheduled to be completed in 20 months, the $5.5 million project is designed to increase freight and passenger train capacity, boost passenger train speeds to 79 mph by reducing track curvature, and enable the North Carolina Department of Transportation to expand Highway 54 to five lanes and two sidewalks to improve traffic flow in and around Research Triangle Park.

Under the project's first phase, Faulconer Construction will build a portion of a new deck for the bridge's main track. After realigning the main track over the new bridge, the contractor will remove the old bridge and deck, and complete a second track.

"The existing bridge, built in 1927, when there was little traffic other than farming vehicles, has a horizontal opening of only 25 feet," said NCRR President Scott Saylor in a prepared statement. "It is a bottleneck on what has become a main artery."

The bridge's current overhead clearance is too low for most trucks. The new bridge will have a higher vertical clearance and 90-foot horizontal opening.

NCRR owns and manages a 317-mile Morehead City-to-Charlotte, N.C., rail corridor over which between six and 10 NS freight trains and between four and eight Amtrak passenger trains operate each day.