The Illinois-Iowa Railfan

The wreckage of the CRANDIC bridge over the Cedar River in Cedar Rapids, Iowa was removed last fall and the replacement was started soon after.

The new bridge is not going to have the character of the old "Erector Set" truss bridge that collapsed, but will be a fine looking bridge none-the-less.

The old bridge had three central piers but the new one has seven. The old piers were one solid boat shaped concrete block whereas the new ones are 4 round pillars each. The old piers sure appears to have just been set on the river bottom, based on what they looked like after the bridge collapsed... they just appeared to have been washed out from under and fell over.

The new piers are 4 drilled holes, down 60 FEET, filled with steel reinforced concrete. The four pillars are connected at the top with a steel reinforced cross beam. Very much like the techology of the Federal Interstate road bridges.

The spans from one pier to the next is made of 2 pre-fab steel "L" beams (left and right sides).

As of last night three spans are in place (including handrails along the sides). I suspect that the rest of the spans will be in place by the middle of next week (if the weather holds!)

Crews were also installing new crossing gates on the streets approaching the bridge, so I bet trains will be running SOON!

(I've got some photos, but this system just hangs when I try to attach them... sorry.)

Well, two things have slowed my expected progress.

1. the weather has been a bit wet making the river higher and washing out some of the coffer dam/road they have built to drive the heavy equipment on IN the river... not thing spectacular. Most of the road was removed intentionally to give a place for the river to flow while they take care of the 2nd thing that I wasn't expecting.

2. I thought they had all the piers in, but had noticed that the last span that was left seemed to be about twice as wide as all the other spans. Seems there will be one more pier built, and it was intentionally left for last to leave a place for the river to flow until all the other piers and spans were in.

Last time I looked (late last week) they were building coffer dam/road across the river channel on the west side and were removing all the coffer dam/road across the east 7/8ths of the river. I cannot tell yet how much reconstruction is to be done to the abutment on the west side. The original east side abutment and steel girder span from the bank to the stone pier was reused (it was re-decked with precast concrete sections), but on the west side it looks like that portion will have to be totally replaced.

So another 2 weeks may be necessary to complete the bridge (dig and pour the 4 pillars and top the last pier, build the bank abutment and place the pre-fab spans). Looking down the length of the bridge it looks like the pre-fab span sections are all ready to have ballast and track layed, so once the last 2 spans are in, it should not take very long before it is ready for a train!