Recapping the first big weekend at Morse

It was the Granville station that was closing Friday night so it came as a surprise to many, including Ald. Joe Moore, when 304 rail ties and two big piles of stone ballast arrived at the intersection of Morse and Glenwood, just east of the Morse Red Line station.

Turns out that Kiewit, the contractor for seven station facelifts, was getting a head start on track work at Morse. It moved in the heavy equipment and got started early Saturday morning, tearing out a half-block length of Track 4 (the northbound express track) and removing the stone ballast. On the section at Lunt where the track runs over the roof of storefronts below, it cleaned and repaired the roof deck before waterproofing it and then rebuilding the track.

Crews of about 30 worked around the clock to repair some viaduct edges and replace others with pre-cast sections that were lifted into place by a crane. New ties and running rail were aligned and installed, then many tons of stone were lifted onto the viaduct with conveyors to ballast the track.

When Kevin O'Neil checked with the crew on Sunday night, he learned that the team didn't get to the southernmost section of Track 4. But a visual inspection on Monday morning showed clean white ballast from just north of Morse through the other side of the viaduct at Lunt. Track 3 (the northbound Red Line track) was also replaced along that section.

Photos below catch some of the action. More on our Facebook page.

If you like what you see here, help us out when the next job starts. Shoot and upload some photos, drop us a note, or tweet what you see (please tag with #stationnamecta, as in #morsecta), and we'll get it onto this site or its sister sites. 

Working on the railroad. (Photo by Kevin O'Neil)

Bare track without ballast. (Photo by Kevin O'Neil)