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10/3/2023
The American Railway Engineering and Maintenance-of-Way Association (AREMA) and Dr. W. William Hay Award for Excellence Review Committee has selected the replacement of the Merchants Bridge over the Mississippi River in St. Louis as the winner of the 2023 Hay Award.
Announced at this week's Railway Interchange conference in Indianapolis during an AREMA general session, the annual award recognizes innovative railway engineering procedures, projects and products and the individuals who have created and successfully applied them to the railroad industry.
Owned by the Terminal Railroad Association of St. Louis, the recently completed Merchants Bridge rebuild replaced a double-track structure built in 1889. Its three main truss spans of 520 feet each needed replacement, and the unreinforced masonry piers did not provide adequate resistance to vessel impact or seismic loading, according to a press release issued by Burns & McDonnell. The firm provided preliminary and final truss design, river pier foundation design, seismic analysis and environmental services for the replacement project.
The engineering solution included stabilizing the existing foundations with micropiles and encasing the footings and original masonry piers with concrete. The new truss span design incorporated a ballasted deck system providing an improvement to the original open-deck, rail-tie-on configuration.
In addition, the track centers on the new bridge deck were widened from 12 feet to 15 feet, providing more operational flexibility and improved safety.
The Hay Award honors the memory of the late William Walter Hay, a longtime AREMA contributor and professor of railway civil engineering at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign.