Second section being set. It was a gray, drizzly day and the pictures came out with a blue hue.(Sorry....crappy camera)

Third section being set. It is the piece over the roadway(White Deer Pike). It was a slow process, jiggling it into location.

The fourth(Last) section settling into position. It Is the southern most piece, against abutment.

Thanks for the pics!

Update: Contractor begins rail placement on north approach to bridge! Bridge is now about a foot higher(Penndot requirement). Track Grade has to be adjusted. Pic of crew connecting to old rails.

South Approach: Ballasting in progress. Picture taken from north end of bridge.

Crew started putting ties down on the girders of the W.D. Bridge! 9/25/2013 Every third tie is longer to accommodate a walkway and handrail. JL

The White Deer Bridge is complete!

Not quite ready to roll a locomotive over the bridge just yet!?! Rail came up about one foot short on north approach! Plus the gradient must be adjusted. Maybe another week and some foreign(to W.D. )equipment may grace the rails in front of the White Deer station for the first time since 1995!!

To those watching this thread who are not close enough to visit, here is White Deer Station in PA. Just north of the refurbished bridge. Restored a few years ago, still in tip-top shape and open to the public on the first Sunday of each month.(Weather Permitting)
We had 3 visitors today,10-6-2013, from Rhode Island, heading home from a speeder run in north central PA. JL

The gap you see is probably there for some formal, legal reason having to do with whether the trackage is formally "part of the general system" yet. Inspection, signing off on rehab work, etc.

The Chapter's newsletter states that the first official movement on the restored trackage will be to remove two Pullman day coaches and a hopper car for movement to a transload site to the south, to be loaded for shipment to the Durbin & Greenbrier Valley, which has purchased them. (Don't worry, this leaves them with three more Pullmans, several freight cars, two switchers, and two cabooses.)

ADM, I beg to differ. While you have a good point, no good track guy would leave such a small gap to accomplish that goal. Leave at least a 20-ft length out (better a full 39-ft), and then install later. This looks more like an "oops". It happens.

Beautiful bridge job-- nice abutment and pier work and really nice deck timbers.

Howard P.

Thank you for the updates PYZedd! It's great to see something like this come together, even if just via the internet.



I have to agree with Howard on this one. I can understand leaving out a rail length to keep the trackage isolated, but to come up about one foot short really seems like an oops where they didn't properly account for the additional rail length due to the gradient change.

It'll be extra work to make that right.

Furthermore, I suspect that it's not "kosher" to put two Thermite track welds so close to one another, nor two joints with joint bars...... Might not matter for rare usage by old cars once in a long while, but if they ever fulfill their ambitions of legitimate freight movements to Allenwood, that joint could be trouble.....

I'd be surprised if this wasn't an "oops." The proper way to rectify it would be to cut in a 15 or 20 foot section of rail. It's usual in contracts to require a minimum of 15 feet of rail if a rail breaks or winds up short for some other reason.