Something a little different. The Long Island Railroad Hempstead Branch line runs from New Hyde Park, to a terminal in Hempstead NY. One of the bridges in Garden City, has a huge appetite for truck bodies and regularly eats them for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. The bridge averages about 1-2 hits per month. I drive under it several times a day and have witnessed more than a few of these strikes. A couple notable ones included a brand new CAT excavator with the cab ripped off, several boom trucks that went boom, and many can opener box trucks. Each strike requires road closures, rail service suspension, and track and bridge inspections before the line can be reopened. Fines to the truck drivers and their companies total in the thousands.
The town and the railroad have added overhead signs, flashing warning lights, you name it, but I guess you can't teach stupid. It's amazing how many drivers are not aware of their vehicle height.
The LIRR has secured funding to replace and raise the bridge from it's current 10'4" clearance to 14'0". I took some pix of the current state of the bridge yesterday and will post more as construction progresses. From what I have heard, the plan is to raise the track and bridge 6" at a time over several weekends until the new span can be rolled into place during the final lift. The LIRR runs on electrified 3rd rail, further complicating the work.
Some additional info here.
Bob
The RR put up these yellow arrows about 5 years ago and used to replace the damaged ones after each hit. They gave up replacing them about a year ago.
This is the view along the ROW looking west.
