Table of contents for Rebuilding a Bridge

  1. Pre-Trip
  2. To the Bridge
  3. Demo Yard

It’s pitch dark, traffic is heavy, my front escort rolls along and I pull onto the Thruway. The chase car immediately blocks the middle lane behind me so I can pull over on the “zipper”. Got to, there’s a jersey wall immediately ahead blocking the shoulder and I’m a lane and a bit wide.

I sit there the whole way, on the zipper. I get ‘er up to maybe forty miles per hour and hold it. Front Escort about a hundred feet ahead, chase car about twenty feet behind. About fifty yards behind is George and his escorts. The cops meantime zip back and forth. blocking entry ramps. I’m rolling about forty so they must be doing Eighty or better. 

Bridge 2

 

In the dark. We only got about five miles and then pull over in a coned off area. Time to deflag/rag and unchain. Then wait. An hour, two hours, some times more goes by.
Crane on Bridge

 

 

 

Finally it’s my turn under the crane. The cops shut down the bridge, I pull up, very VERY carefully under the crane. To my right is a gap in the surface of the bridge, open air all the way to the river. The crane crew climbs all over my trailer and hooks up the panel. In a short while I feel it lift and I’m given the go ahead, I pull up. They lift the panel off and set it “in the hole”.

trash trailerI pull up next to the trash trailer, which has the piece of bridge they just tore out. I drop my trailer and hook up to the trash trailer. The “trasher hauler” takes my former trailer away. I’ll see it again in a couple of days with a new panel on it.

Mean time I chaindown, flag, rag and lite the trash trailer. VERY carefully. It’s been treated roughly and there’s pieces of rebar, ripped metal, and wire sticking out all over. That’s why we call it “trash”.

Crossing bridgeWhen I’m done and George is done, we take out at five mph across the bridge. It’s a three mile bridge. We can’t be closer to each other than a thousand foot and only one of us at a time on the “main span”.

About forty five minutes later we come to the toll plaza. Once again, VERY carefully I squeezed a twelve wide load thru a narrow opening, then wait.

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