The beams will arrive in Pittsburgh after a slow, strategic, 3 1/2-hour drive to the city.
The beams will arrive in Pittsburgh after a slow, strategic, 3 1/2-hour drive to the city.
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The beams will arrive in Pittsburgh after a slow, strategic, 3 1/2-hour drive to the city.
PennStress, in Blair County, is making 21 concrete beams that will change the Fern Hollow Bridge from a steel K-bridge before it fell earlier this year into a concrete bridge.
"It's a pre-stress beam, which means we stress the bottom with steel strands, set it up, pour the concrete and then we release it. And when it gains the strength it needs, then we put them on a truck and ship them down the road," said Greg Gorman, PennStress president.
See where the beams are made: Click the video above to watch the report from Blair County, Pa.
Gorman said it takes 24 hours to make each beam, which is 8 feet tall, 155 feet long, 33 inches wide and weighs 100 tons.
Gorman said two beams will be delivered on most days, with a break to move the crane. Each should be on site, he said, in just more than two weeks.
The path to Pittsburgh, Gorman said, is planned and approved to handle the weight before the drivers make what is ultimately a slow, strategic, 3 1/2-hour drive to the city.
"The driver can actually steer from inside the truck," Gorman said. "He can steer the back rear end of the beam, and so you saw that in some of the video yesterday when it looked like it was a little misaligned, that was on purpose, so these drivers are just incredible when they maneuver these sizable loads into a city like Pittsburgh."
Gorman said PennStress has built several structures in Pittsburgh, including several garages for UPMC, one next to PNC Park and one near PPG Paints Arena. He said they also built the Tower of Voices at the Flight 93 memorial in Shanksville.
Their 21 beams for the Fern Hollow will be in place by Aug. 12.
"Twenty-one of our beams there, and there are a whole lot more beams in Pittsburgh that are ours and hopefully a lot more to come," Gorman said.
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