Crossing art?

Crossing repairs are far from a work of art, or are they?  Recent crossing repairs on King Street in Snoqualmie and North Bend Way in King County appeared to have more in common with crazy quilting than a roadway.  Yet art is in the eyes of the beholder, so you decide.

Notwithstanding, broken asphalt occurs in a somewhat haphazard and random fashion, which is exacerbated by local wintertime snow removal.  And every five or so years the cumulative effect causes enough damage to make some crossings  rough for cars and light trucks.  So the Museum hired Asphalt by George to remove the failed sections and replace with new hot mix.

First, the roadway was closed off.  The defective sections were cut out with a concrete saw.  Then a worker pried out the old material. A truck brought in a load of hot mix, and a compactor tamped it into the patchwork. Finally, some cracks and the seams where sealed with hot tar.  (Thanks to the City of Snoqualmie Public Works Department for closing King Street to allow this work to occur safely!)

North Bend Way is a wider and faster crossing than King Street.  Prevailing speeds can reach 70 MPH over this 160-foot long crossing, and it is a critical corridor so it is difficult to close the road.  The patchwork effort there required a little more choreography to assure worker safety, but the theory was the same.

Completion of this crossing work represents two more summer projects the Museum can check off the list, and another task completed in time for Day Out With Thomas 2018. 

Crossing repairs

Center of crossing is re-

paired on North Bend Way.

It may be Halloween but things will no longer go bump in the night when using several newly-repaired crossings. 

The Northwest Railway Museum has 13 public crossings at grade or, more simply stated, 13 public roads that cross the tracks.  The Museum has certain statutory responsibilities to maintain portions of these crossings even though it is cars and trucks and not trains that wear them out.  Other portions of the crossing are generally the responsibility of the road authority.

Asphalt By George's crew compacts

new asphalt on Stone Quarry Road.

 Projects usually turn out better when groups and individuals work together, and road and railway projects often work the same way.   So the City of Snoqualmie and the Northwest Railway Museum hired Snoqualmie’s own Asphalt By George to perform repairs on Northern Street, Stone Quarry Road and North Bend Way and then split up the costs according to areas of responsibility.  These crossings were damaged by heavy use, snow plows, and just plain old age.  

George's crew poses at Northern Street

along with locomotive 4024.

Deteriorated wooden planks and broken asphalt were removed and replaced with new asphalt.  A spacer was used to ensure the slots to accommodate the car and locomotive wheels were inserted.  And old asphalt was shipped to the asphalt plant to be recycled into new asphalt.  Kudos to the great workers at Asphalt By George, and to the City of Snoqualmie Public Works Department for working with the Museum!