Lobato "Repair" is actually complete replacement of major structural elements

During Railfest, two interesting posts about Lobato bridge appeared over at the Gote:


Jaybawb's Tuesday, 24 August 2010, at 1:22 p.m. Post "Message from Elmer Salazar to employees"

and

Jaybawb's Thursday, 26 August 2010, at 12:12 p.m. Post "Lobato estimates- from The Friends"

The first post indicates that the Lobato "repair" is actually complete replacement of major structural elements:
[quote="Message from Elmer Salazar to employees" posted at the Gote]
Option one is to replace the trestle and option two, based on preliminary reports from HDR, is to repair the trestle. We are expecting a final written report from the engineering firm on or about August 27, 2010. Informally, the engineering firm, along with Marvin and John are beginning to [b]look at options for replacing all of the girders on the trestle (Option #2, Repair)[/b] and finding a steel mill that can manufacture the girders as yet to be specified in the engineering design. The team is trying to run options in parallel so as to preserve time but thus far, getting the girders built could take some time and the timeline may be measured in months as opposed to weeks. Very early in the process, but we continue to believe that trying to get the trestle rebuilt, if that is the option chosen, before the snow flies is the preferred option. The repair will also require some complicated staging, road development, a large crane, etc. all of which will take time to bring about. The cost of repair is somewhere around $2M and the total replacement of the trestle option is in the neighborhood of $4M+.[/quote]

I suspect the C&TS will have difficulty obtaining funding for this "repair" since expending 50% of the replacement cost on a "repair" makes no sense from a life cycle cost analysis perspective.

--
Chris Webster