MOBILE, Ala. -- Fire damaged a railroad trestle along the CSX Transportation main line Saturday afternoon, disabling the north Mobile County bridge for at least two weeks and disrupting rail traffic through Mobile, CSX railroad police said Sunday.
The bridge tender at the span crossing Bayou Sara told railroad police that three juveniles were seen in the area of the bridge shortly before the fire broke out. Railroad police said they believe the juveniles set the fire.
Mobile Fire Department boat and fire truck companies came to the scene and put the fire out, but not before heavy damage had been inflicted.
Gary Sease, a CSX spokesman based out of Jacksonville, Fla., said the bridge damage will affect as many as 18 freight trains daily in Mobile.
CSX service between New Orleans and Mobile would not change, but the railroad has a plan to reroute many trains around Mobile while the bridge is out, Sease said.
CSX has secured the cooperation of the Union Pacific, Norfolk Southern, Burlington Northern Santa Fe Railway and Kansas City Southern to move freight around Mobile, Sease said. Details of the plan were still being worked out Sunday night, he said.
"Additionally, we will survey the bridge Monday to see exactly what we need to do," Sease said.
The bridge was described as a swing span, a type of bridge that is controlled by a tender in a tower in the middle and rotates 90 degrees to allow ship and boat traffic through when trains are not passing.
Trains leaving Mobile on the CSX must cross a network of bridges in the Mobile River Delta before reaching Baldwin County on the railroad mainline that runs north to Birmingham, Nashville and beyond, company system maps show. CSX trains going to Florida must use the route as well before reaching Pensacola by way of Flomaton.
The Bayou Sara span is about two miles south of the Big Bayou Canot bridge, which was the scene of the Amtrak Sunset Limited disaster on Sept. 22, 1993. In that incident, a barge struck the span minutes before the passenger train arrived and derailed. The wreck killed 47 people.
(The preceding article by Mark R. Kent was published February 9, 2009, by The Press-Register.)
