Replacement of the Vermont Railway through downtown Middlebury, Vermont required the removal and replacement of 3500 linear feet of railroad track, all within the Middlebury Village Historic District. Originally constructed in the 1840s, the Vermont Railway splits the Middlebury, Vermont downtown and Town Green area in half. The project also included removal and replacement of both Main and Merchant’s Row bridges with a precast tunnel to accommodate commuter rail traffic and double-stacked rail cars. These bridges spanned the 20-foot deep rail corridor for over 100 years.
The Vermont Agency of Transportation utilized the Construction Manager / General Contractor (CM/GC) contract vehicle and engaged Kubricky Construction who retained William J. Frank Engineering (WJF) to assist them in accomplishing this ambitious project during a 10-week shutdown period to accomplish this ambitious project. William J. Frank Engineering engaged GTR to provide Geotechnical Engineering design support throughout the Project
GTR provided temporary support of excavation (SOE) design services to the project across multiple site conditions across the Project GTR developed and designed various temporary earth support systems consisting of both cantilever and braced drilled soldier piles, temporary soil nail wall and cantilever sheet piling. GTR’s scope included coordination and collaboration with WJF and Kubricky permitting SOE installation ahead of a ten (10) week track outage. The final contract included completion of extensive SOE of over 10,000 LF of drilled soldier piles, 30,000 SF of lagging, 2700 LF of tiebacks, as well as, soil nails and sheeting to support a 28,600 cubic yard tunnel cut in the existing rail corridor. This project increased the vertical clearance for the railroad by more than three feet, while maintaining the existing roadway profiles and avoided impacts to the adjoining sidewalks and historic buildings.
