Chestnut Hill West Line Bridge

Project Highlights / Scope of Work

• Steel and concrete rehabilitation of a 2 track bridge over 4 active tracks
• Concrete demolition and repairs
• Pile driving, bridge jacking, steel repairs, waterproofing, track rehabilitation & electrical work
• 365 day schedule was accomplished through a variety of track outages

Railroad Construction Co. completed work for SEPTA on the Chestnut Hill West Bridge Line 0.35 in Philadelphia, PA.  The structure is a 125’ long rail-only bridge which runs over SEPTA’s mainline tracks.  The $6 million contract called for the complete rehabilitation of the bridge including extensive repairs resulting in increased stability.

Two tracks on the bridge were removed and replaced.  New ballast was installed and the catenaries and feeders for the mainline tracks were replaced.  The extensive concrete work was performed mainly during night shift outages.  Included was the removal of encasements from floor beams and truss fascias and the installation of new curbing.  Concrete patchwork repairs were performed to the abutments and wingwall.  The decking was waterproofed and new drainage was added. 

A total of forty-four new gusset plates were installed.  This proved a challenge since the new plates would need to match the existing ones exactly for ease of replacement.  To accomplish this, impressions of the rivet locations were made in Styrofoam sheets and sent out for fabrication.  The new plates were then easily retrofitted over the existing ones. 

Our thanks to the following for their assistance with the project:  Dave Koerner, Moussa Cisse, John Sponseller and Abdullah Abdullah of SEPTA and Abbas Tehrani of Burns Engineering.