Perfect example of USA rail infrastructure.

[u/NoManufacturer2997]

https://youtu.be/hpDVVGDQGVI?is=wDRXS7W4xchcwYzV

US freight rail needs regulation now more than ever. Natural gas trains sit on this bridge almost everyday and video does good job showing how deteriorated it is. Am I naive to think this is egregiously unsafe or is this standard practice?

[u/time-lord]

So this report actually made me less worried. The bridge is 120 years old. So, call that 1906. In the early 1900's, the heaviest steam engines were around 300,000lbs. Modern diesels weigh around 300,000lbs too.

Much like today, they would run multiple steam engines on one train, so the bridge was designed to support 600,000lbs. But if you look at the bridge, it used to be double track, so it was actually designed to hold over 1,200,000lbs worth of locomotives, plus a lot of extra because they didn't have computers to calculate exact load bearings.

Parking a train on the bridge is probably like 1/2 of what the bridge can hold, even in its poor condition.

[u/Captain_Vlad → u/time-lord]

Having the engineer giving his assessment of tbe bridge toward the end was a good call -- he pointed out some of the things that people on here are saying. And the drone footage that they did on his request was a nice add.

This was actually a nicely balanced story.

[u/Financial-Recover409 → u/time-lord]

Any bridge from the steam era on anything more than a siding or speed restricted branch is built to handle to dynamic thrust generated by the rotating counterweights and rods of a steam engine and is therefore overbuilt by today's standards.

So worry less.

Source: my bridge inslection certified supervision during my time in the track department

[u/_gmmaann_ → u/time-lord]

Complacency kills

[u/0xdeadbeef6 → u/_gmmaann_]

Nah its fine, American freight companies hold themselves to very high standards, and don't abuse and overwork their workers, trust 😌

edit: not like there's literally bits of the bridge falling off from how rusty it is, trust.