This is a long shot, but I am somewhat unfamiliar with railroad procedures. I work for a company who is about to do some work near in a railroad right of way. The railroad required that we submit a plan for flagging during our construction. One requirement they asked us (North Folk Southern for context) to provide, is a ground monitoring plan. I understand that the purpose of the plan is to account for ground movement's that might occur during boring(we are converting an over-head line) underground.?ÿ
The only problem I have, is providing the railroad with the subcontractor or survey company to monitor the plan. Do railroad's want a specific type of surveying company? Or will they be satisfied as long as we provide some sort of plan or contingency in such case of an issue.?ÿ
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Since the RR is imposing the requirement, I suggest asking the RR to provide monitoring specifics.?ÿ Trying to guess at what they'll find acceptable is a good way to delay the project and blow up the budget.
Heck, the plan could consist of a daily visual inspection for any signs of slope failure or it might entail weekly, daily, or hourly monitoring of any number of fixed points for signs of movement. One plan adds practically nothing to the cost of the project the other could be extremely costly.
I think that you might mean Norfolk Southern Railway.
I would recommend contacting the railroad directly for specifics.?ÿ The are pretty serious about disturbing the rail bed.?ÿ For the project I've been involved with, they have required daily settlement monitoring at a minimum.?ÿ For one long term project along an Amtrak route we ended up utilizing our real-time monitoring system.?ÿ A lot of cost up front but considerably cheaper over the course of a summer.?ÿ As a side note, I would say the 'flagging' they are asking about is the railroad protection type vs highway.?ÿ That can get expensive costing almost as much as the field work.
We did one like that for a gas main bored under the tracks. We set lath at center of bore and some distance offset , i believe we did two sets on each side the of the track. We stuck reflectorless targets on the lath and the tracks and we were able to shoot them anytime after that without entering the ROW. I think we did one round before the bore, a couple/three rounds each day during the bore and one or two rounds a few days after completion. Just for elevation checks. We were working for the utility contractor under their specs.
