he Alaska Railroad wouldn’t be possible without the 175 bridges and large culverts that span barriers that would otherwise limit travel. Over time, many of these bridges have deteriorated and now require rehabilitation or replacement.

The Alaska Railroad Corporation (ARRC) has a systemwide five-year plan that includes rehabilitation or replacement of approximately forty-five bridges ranging from small wooden bridges to more massive steel spans. The bridge program follows comprehensive track replacement that spanned the entire length of the railroad, from Seward to Eielson Air Force base.

“We can rehabilitate 560 feet of railroad, but if you leave out 28 feet of bridges, you don’t have a 560-feet railroad anymore,” says Brian Lindamood, ARRC vice president and chief engineer. “But after we’ve fixed the full physical route once and for all and made it what it needs to be, we’ll be able to maintain it over the long term.”

In 1985, the State of Alaska purchased the sixty-year-old railroad from the federal government for $22.3 million and spent the next few years rebuilding it after years of poor maintenance. Total repair costs exceeded $700 million.

“The best thing that happened was that the state got a fully depreciated railroad; the worst thing that happened was that the state got a fully depreciated railroad and did not have the capital to renew it and get it to where it needed to be,” says Lindamood. “They struggled for two decades with that. When federal money became available, we worked with our legislative team to start bringing in capital funds to help fix it up. But we’re still looking at billions of dollars in deferred maintenance.”

He adds that, under federal ownership, the railroad had gone thirty years without replacing any bridges, and ARRC is still catching up to this day.

“In the lean years right after the transfer, the railroad was looking for every nickel to keep the track open, so we mainly replaced small, easy bridges,” he says. “We still have the big ones to reckon with, which has been our focus for the last two to three years and will remain our focus for the next seven to ten years.”

According to Lindamood, when the railroad first fully opened in 1923, its builders were doing everything they could to complete it quickly, which included cutting down trees to build temporary bridges. While some of those bridges have since been replaced by steel bridges, approximately 45 percent of the railroad’s bridges are more than ninety years old.

“When I took this job in 2018, one bridge was over 100 years old; the next year, that number was up to thirty-seven bridges, and the next year even more,” he says. “They’ve performed very well, and in a lot of cases we were able to go in and rehabilitate them, cleaning them up, replacing members damaged over years, and making them a little bit stronger.

“In other cases, we’re looking at bridges that were put in after World War II that were designed to European railroad specifications, which are lighter than the ones in the United States,” he adds. “We’ll be fully replacing a lot of those bridges as they are not strong enough to continue to hold the traffic they are carrying.”

Once the bridge program is completed, passengers and freight customers will both feel the benefits. Passenger service will be more reliable, and efficiency of railroad operations will improve; trains will move at more consistent speeds since they will no longer be required to slow down when traveling over bridges due to bridge age and deterioration. Freight operation costs may also be reduced thanks to higher capacity; currently, ARRC must limit loads on railcars to accommodate bridge weight capacity that is significantly lower than the rest of North America’s rail freight network.

“In the 1990s, the standard railroad car weight went from 263,000 pounds to 286,000 pounds, but we’ve never made that jump,” says Lindamood. “The bridge program will allow us to do that. Instead of cars carrying 100 tons, they will be able to carry 110 tons, an increase of 10 percent.”

In 2005, the ARRC used GARVEE bonds, a form of forward-funded federal financing, to overhaul the track from one end of the railroad to the other. The rehabilitation took about six years, and ARRC paid off the bonds two years ago, clearing the way for the next phase.

“We put $250 million into the track, and we’re going to put a similar amount into the bridges,” says Lindamood, noting that the railroad has already begun repair work and is now about 20 percent into the project. “With inflation, however, this may cost $400 million before we’re all done.”

The timeline of various projects is also hard to predict as the current political climate may affect federal funding.

“Like everything else with the federal government, who knows what will happen?” says Lindamood. “In the past couple of months, we’ve had to wait for the granting agencies that we work with to get caught up with how the world is changing. We do know that one competitive grant we plan to apply for is still planning to come out, but it has been delayed three or four months. We don’t know if some other programs that we were planning on using will survive.”

Lindamood adds, “Ask me again in six months, and I’ll probably have different answers.”

The ARRC’s 2025 Bridge Program budget is approximately $15 million, mostly paid with Federal Transit Administration formula funds, which require a 20 percent match from ARRC. The remaining projects are funded through competitive grants from the Federal Railroad Administration or by the corporation’s internal funds—but not from the state treasury.

“The Alaska Railroad is self-sustaining; we’re not a part of the capital budget,” says Lindamood. “We charge customers $110 to move something from point A to point B that costs $100, and we put that $10 profit right back into infrastructure. Because we run regularly scheduled year-round passenger rail services, we are able to get formula funds from the Federal Transit Administration, which are substantially used on infrastructure projects.”

He adds that the railroad has also been very successful over the last couple of years—to the tune of hundreds of millions of dollars—in competing for grants. Largely run through the Federal Railroad Administration, these grants fund 50 percent to 80 percent of projects.

“We then match those funds to complete projects; for example, the Mears Memorial Bridge in Nenana is being funded by a federal grant of $48 million, with the Alaska Railroad making up the 20 percent difference,” says Lindamood.

Each year, ARRC begins work on at least three bridge projects, and more are tackled as funding allows.

The Eagle River Bridge at railroad milepost 127.5, north of Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson, is now entering the construction phase. The $40 million project, awarded to Kiewit in 2022, will replace the 308-foot deck girder bridge with a new 360-foot triple-span deck plate girder bridge. Completion is estimated by the end of 2026.

Swalling General Contractors is replacing the 151-foot bridge that crosses Bird Creek at railroad milepost 86.6, south of Anchorage. The $7.74 million project, which will replace the aging Pratt style 123-foot pony truss span and two 14-foot timber trestles with a 125-foot through-plate girder bridge, is slated for completion this summer.

Martinus Bottom Line is rehabilitating the 406-foot, open deck, steel through-truss bridge crossing the Talkeetna River at railroad milepost 227.1. The $9 million project will rehabilitate the two 200-foot steel through-truss spans with targeted repairs, replacing an aging 400-foot walkway and repairing the walkway fence.

At the time of this article, ARRC was waiting on bid results for replacing the 123-foot Pratt style pony truss bridge and two 35-foot I-beam spans crossing Ship Creek near downtown Anchorage, railroad milepost 114.3. The aging bridge will be replaced with a new ballast deck bridge consisting of two 79-foot and one 30-foot steel I-beam spans.

“We’re going to make it a hair longer and also make room for a bike path that the municipality is building to connect Ship Creek Trail with the Coastal Trail,” says Lindamood of the $16.2 million project just outside the windows of the ARRC headquarters building.

In the next few years, ARRC expects to use a competitive grant to replace the six-span, 647-foot structure over the Chena River near Fort Wainwright and use a $43 million Consolidated Rail Infrastructure and Safety Improvements grant to rehabilitate the Mears Memorial Bridge in Nenana. It is also waiting on final approvals to move forward with replacing a single-span, 62-foot through-girder bridge over Little Goldstream Creek at railroad milepost 422.9 about 10 miles north of Nenana with a 75-foot steel span bridge.

“I’d like to have that bid on the street this year, but the federal government being what it is, I just don’t know,” says Lindamood.

In the next year, ARRC is hoping to replace the single span, 80-foot deck plate girder bridge over Little Willow Creek at railroad milepost 190.5 north of Willow with a 25-foot through-plate girder bridge. Sometime in the next five years, the railroad would also like to rehabilitate the iconic Hurricane Gulch Bridge at railroad milepost 284.2, the longest and tallest bridge on the Alaska Railroad, if grant funding allows.

“We’ve also got three bridges north of the entrance to Denali Park that are funding-dependent,” says Lindamood of the two 125-foot bridges and one 400-foot bridge. “We’re working on getting environmental approvals back now, and we’re hoping to start one bridge next year, one the year after, and one the year after that.”

Depending on the Alaska Department of Transportation and Public Facilities (DOT&PF) schedule, ARRC will also be working on a large truss bridge over the Snow River at railroad milepost 14.5 north of Seward in the next couple of years. DOT&PF first needs to replace a highway grade separation at the south end before work on the bridge can start.

“The bridge is subject to flooding every other year, particularly with the glacial outburst flood, and the streambed has accreted to the point that we have to make the bridge higher,” says Lindamood. “Because the highway is over us at the south end, it means the road has to go up as well.” The project will also include work on the approach spans and other repairs.

One challenge with every project is how to shut down a bridge without causing too many passenger and freight issues.

“There is no detour route; there’s only one railroad between Seward and Fairbanks,” says Lindamood. “While DOT can find other routes [for highway construction], a lot of what drives our bridge design is the ability to do it under traffic. We may have to shut down for 48 hours, but we look for a time when there is not as much traffic and try to bend schedules around that.”

While ARRC has a small engineering team and project management team that deals with the day-to-day upkeep, it often relies on environmental engineering consultants and local contractors for construction support.

“Our in-house staff deals with the smaller bridges and already has a lot of work in front of them keeping our existing bridges in a state of good repair,” says Lindamood. “The bigger bridges require a level of expertise and equipment that we don’t need to carry in the long-term, so it makes more sense to use contractors.”

While some projects are low-bid contracts, others, like the Eagle River Bridge project, are awarded through alternative delivery methods, including construction management general contractor. After completing 30 percent of the design, ARRC hired Kiewit to find the best way and best price to deliver the project.

“We use this method when we’re working on very complicated projects,” says Lindamood. “The Eagle River project is located in a very narrow river canyon on an Air Force base. It’s not easy to access; there’s a river with fish in it and an archeological site downstream. That’s why we selected Kiewit to help.”

When the program is completed, one-quarter of bridges along the tracks will be ready to enter the railroad’s second century of operations.

Lindamood says, “We are doing everything we can through the bridge program and other initiatives to make sure that Alaska gets the rail service it needs.”