The site off Cleveland Street where a contractor is preparing to replace the Periwinkle Creek bridge on the Union Pacific mainline. (Photo Sept. 22, 2025)
Passenger train service in Albany will be interrupted Sunday while a contractor replaces the railroad bridge across Periwinkle Creek on the Union Pacific’s mainline.
After hours on Monday, I took a bike ride to the construction site at 408 Cleveland St. S.E. Heavy equipment and sections of the new bridge were sitting there. Also on the site, a huge pile of ballast, the rock used to support the ties that hold railroad racks.
Presumably work has been going on for some time to replace the wooden pilings of the old bridge with steel, as was done on Cox Creek three years ago.
Bob Melbo, the rail planner at the Oregon Department of Transportation, sent me word of the bridge project Monday. Here’s part of his email:
“UP has scheduled a 20-hour shutdown of the line to tear out the existing 155-foot ballast deck timber bridge and install a new structure. For the past several years UP has been replacing one to three timber structures on its Willamette Valley mainline in late summer or early fall. They are experts at doing this within the period they allow themselves.
“All six passenger trains that would normally stop in Albany on Sunday have been annulled. Substitute buses will run in place of the four Amtrak Cascades trains, but there will be no alternate service for the Coast Starlight, which is being cancelled between Seattle and Sacramento. The Starlight will operate normally on Sunday between Sacramento and Los Angeles.
“Because of the way train equipment is cycled, Saturday evening’s Cascades train (No. 507) from Portland to Eugene, and the Monday morning Cascades train from Eugene to Portland (No. 504), will be represented by buses too. In all, six Cascades and two Starlight trains are being sidelined.”
The “ballast deck” bridge being replaced is a trough made of timbers and filled with crushed rock to support the ties and rails. From the looks of it, it’s being replaced with long concrete tubs of the kind used to replace the mainline bridge over Cox Creek in 2022.
The contractor is ZA Construction LLC, a railroad service company. Its website says Zachary R. Ainsworth founded the company with two employees in Mississippi in 2010. By 2023 it had 400 employees, a fleet of 1,000 vehicles and equipment, and shops in seven states including California. The head office was in Mendenhall, Miss.
All points on the former Southern Pacific system are measured in terms of distance from San Francisco. As a matter of interest, Melbo pointed out that the Albany bridge now being replaced is at milepost 691.77. (hh)
Sections of the new railroad bridge wait to be installed.
This is the section of track where the bridge, in the distance, will be replaced. The view is from the Pine Street pedestrian crossing.
I know you love the money spent on road work in Albany but did anybody ever ask how the railroad can remove a 155′ bridge and replace it in 20 hours. ODOT is starting to rebuild I-5 south of Kuebler Road in Salem and they have to replace an overpass to do it. Next year will be the 3rd year of working on the overpass and hopefully it will be done but I doubt it. The last time they widened I-5 though Salem they replaced 4 overpasses and it took 10 years.
I live off Peoria Rd and it just took the county nearly five months to replace a 50 ft bridge. Might have been smaller than that! LOL!
Al Nyman’s question about the speed of railroad bridge replacement is worthy of thought. Is it because any downtime affects their bottom line? Is it because of exclusive use?
As another example, the BNSF railroad bridge 5.1 across the Willamette in Portland was originally a swing-span. It was replaced by a lift bridge in 72 hours(!) Imagine getting ODOT to replace anything in three days.