Union Pacific Railroad – Emergency Blasting

PROJECT DETAILS

At 3:00 PM, Sunday, March 11th, Marty Hunter of Hunter Demolition contacted Jared Redyke with an emergency job.

A Union Pacific freight train derailed on the bridge over the Sulfur River, near Naples, Texas.  The wreck took out two of the bridge piers in the middle of the river.

No injuries, no casualties, and no hazardous waste in the river.  But the railroad line was paralyzed until a new bridge could be constructed.

The exact cause of the derailment was not known but track failure was suspected.  The freight cars tore through the bridge decking and sheared 2 piers off and left them in the middle of the river with bridge beams, rail cars, and cargo lying on top of them.

The pilings for the new bridge could not be driven until these concrete piers were moved out of the way.

Hulcher Services was onsite 24 hours a day pulling the wrecked freight cars from the river.  Hunter Demolition was in charge of removing those concrete bridge piers from the path of the new bridge being constructed from both ends, 24 hours a day.

The water over the reinforced concrete piers was so deep that it was making mechanical methods of concrete demolition difficult and time consuming.  The bridge had to be completed and the railroad line opened as soon as possible.

New bridge construction was coming from both sides and meeting in the middle of the river, and time was growing short.  The bridge crew would soon have to stop if those piers weren’t out of the way.  There was only one way to get those underwater piers demolished on schedule.

Dykon arrived onsite, ready to go, at 1:30 AM, Monday morning, March 12th, less than 8 hours after being called.

Following a 6:00 AM meeting with the onsite project managers, Marty Hunter with Hunter Demolition ordered floating barge sections for Dykon’s drilling equipment to work off of. The next task was to get this equipment to the wreck site.  There was no road access to the site closer than half a mile.  Everything had to be loaded on freight cars, railed in and offloaded with cranes into the work area.

Working together with an army of on-site contractors, work began on the explosive demolition of the underwater piers laying in the bottom of the Sulphur river.  The first step was to drill the holes for the charges into the underwater pier sections which had been torn loose from the footings from the impact of the loaded freight cars when they fell through the existing bridge decking and were left in the bottom of the river directly in the path of the new bridge being constructed.

There were two piers that had to be removed.  The first was under ten feet of water with very little current to deal with.  Tons and tons of ballast were hauled in to support the equipment which was removing the tangled freight cars from over the top of the pier sections.

The drill barge was held steady with an excavator setting on top of the ballast.  holes were drilled from the surface of the water and sleeved with PVC pipes which would later be used to load the explosives through, and into the holes drilled in the piers.

Once the first one was demolished, work began immediately on the second pier.  The second pier was the toughest one.  It was in the bottom of the deepest part of the sulphur river, right in the center of the channel where the current was the swiftest, under 18 feet of water.

There was no ballast out in the river for equipment to set on and steady Dykon’s drill barge.  Divers were sent down to locate the corners of the pier.

Alpha Pile & Railroad provided a huge spud barge anchored in place to hold the smaller drill barge steady while the holes were drilled into the piers for the explosives.

The water in the center of the channel was so deep and swift that the pvc pipes could not be stabbed into the drilled holes from the surface.  Divers were sent down to help case the holes as they were drilled.

When the drilling was completed, the explosives used for demolishing the piers was loaded through the pvc pipe casings.

Then all barges and equipment were moved away from the shot area to protect them from the mild water wake that would result from the explosion under the water.

The project was completed safely, successfully and quickly.  There were numerous on-site contractors who contributed to the success of this project.  This project could not have been completed in the time it was without the hard work and coordination of all of the contractors present.

Dykon would like to extend our personal thanks to everyone involved for the manner in which the work was coordinated and carried out.  You couldn’t ask for a better group to work with.  We were honored to be able to work with such a group of professionals in the expeditious completion of the project and the restoring of the Union Pacific Railroad to its normal activity.