Work began earlier this week to resurface the roadway on the bridge connecting Fort Frances to International Falls.
The bridge operator—Minnesota, Dakota, & Western Railway Co.—has hired Tom Jones and Sons Ltd. from Thunder Bay to put down a new concrete overlay in time for the summer tourist season.
And things are right on track to be completed by the target date, MD&W safety co-ordinator Paul McLaughlin said Wednesday.
“We should be finished by May 3,” McLaughlin said from his cell phone on the bridge. “We plan to begin pouring [concrete] on Thursday [today] on one lane and the other next week.”
The lanes are being done separately in order to allow normal traffic flow to continue while the work is underway. Each pour takes two days, followed by three days of curing time.
When one lane is complete, work will start on the other.
Over the past few days, the crew has been sandblasting the existing surface—a process McLaughlin referred to as “scarifying”—in order to create a rough surface upon which the new material can bond.
The preliminary work was done with a mobile blaster, but small sections, such as expansion grids, were done by a two-man crew wielding high-pressure hoses.
While the work is underway, southbound traffic is being diverted to the rail bridge while the northbound flow is on the portion of the concrete road that remains open.
But McLaughlin stressed there is no impediment to normal traffic flow apart from the change in routing.
Fort Frances Times
Local News from Across the Rainy River District
