heatermason Wrote:
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> My suspicion is they filled them not so much as to
> hold up trains (the trestles were doing that), but
> for other reasons.

Good post. A couple of other reasons that I can think of would be to do away with the permanent slow order that a tall trestle would represent, and to allow reballasting and jacking the track as needed on either end of the trestle without having to worry about the trestle being at a fixed elevation. To that end, removing the trestle deck timbers and replacing them with standard ties was probably done relatively soon after filling in the trestle to allow for jacking and tamping of the new fill as needed.

Regarding the fill settling, that is just normal maintenance, quickly remedied with a ballast car and a section gang. The Heber Valley has a fill that I don't believe was ever a trestle, however it settles nearly every winter due to the geology moving underneath it. Has been that way since the railroad was built in the 1930's. Every time it drops, they spread more ballast and jack it back up. It's just a cost of doing business.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 05/26/2020 12:06PM by Kelly Anderson.