Building 2 Bridges

gghb · Jan 4, 2012

afternoon in my area railroad flat cars are availble and very easy to set if you have the equipment but the permiting is imposible anymore the salmon gestapo controls all water in western washington even repairing is very difficult.
Greg

edlegault · Jan 4, 2012

Surplus railroad flatbed cars are strong enough to drive an army tank across. I have read of loggers using them for quick, non-intrusive temporary bridges across streams (when my dad was alive and a logger we used to just drive through the creeks). After the Northridge earthquake in LA in the '90's Caltrans stacked railroad flatbed cars to build temporary overpasses. Would need a crane to set in place (can't drag them through the crick). And ideally would need a concrete abutment on each side to set upon for permanent bridge. But just setting on the banks might be ok for temp.

pilot-werx · Jan 4, 2012

I am with Eddie on this one... Our tanker rolls down the road at a 100k and the last thing I would want to do is cross a DIY bridge. Have it designed and be done with it.....

Depmandog · Jan 4, 2012

You might consider military surplus. The specs on these are available, which should lower your engineering costs for the supports.

Not sure where you can locate them, but I have known a few who have purchased them for similar situations.

rd_macgregor · Jan 5, 2012

I'm facing a similar situation and am (still) hoping to find a "flat rack" shipping container to use for the bridge. These are typically in the 20K kg to 30K kg load capacity range. My plan for abutment was actually none. Because a 20 ft. deck is significantly longer than my span, I intend to support the bridge on I-beam driven piles with an I-beam (welded) horizontal support on each end and leave natural streambanks underneath (fortunately the bridge is in a stable area).
Unfortunately, while it is really easy to come by shipping containers, flat racks are a lot harder to get ahold of.

My fallback plan is a semi or wrecker flatbed, but I haven't found one of those, yet either...thank goodness my existing bridge hasn't yet deteriorated to the point where I MUST replace it right away!
BOB

mscheer772 · Jan 7, 2012

To get something like a bridge installed in Wisconsin over a stream bed that is one foot across at it's widest (without any fish species to deal with), would take a $40,000 engineering study for starters. Ask me how I know this?