The North Carolina Department of Transportation (NCDOT) has put the old saying “Necessity is the mother of invention” into practice to restore access to communities cut off by Hurricane Helene.
NCDOT has partnered with the Innovative Bridge Company (IBC) to replace bridges washed away by the storm. The temporary bridges are built using retired railroad flatcars.
The cars, which have had their wheels and couplers removed, are essentially long, flat pieces of metal. But the cars can only last so long on a railroad. So, instead of seeing them cut up for scrap, IBC turns them into bridges.
“We usually put in 180–200 bridges per year all around the country that are designed to be temporary [or] permanent,” Lee Roberts, owner of Innovative Bridge Company, told Sci NC. “We’ve never done disaster work before, but when the City of Asheville and NCDOT reached out in October, we came to help, and we haven’t left.”
Roughly 40 railcar bridges have been installed so far.
Roberts added it was a bit of a challenge getting the railcar flatbeds through the mountains. However, once the cars are in place over the waterway, their main steel structure is used as the bridge deck. The beds are welded together, the guardrails are installed, and the cars are paved over. The road can be ready in two days.
“It’s really quick,” said Roberts. “There’s no other way to build a bridge that is safe, sturdy and will last a while than this. It’s really fast.”
“We’ve never done something like this before, but we needed a safe and quick solution that would open up communities not only for their safety but also for their daily lives,” said Jody Lawrence, assistant division construction chief for NCDOT, in an email. “It’s a really good feeling for this department that we’ve been able to connect communities this quickly.”
The railcar bridges are a good temporary solution because of their timeliness, weight capacity and simplicity to build. They are also cost-efficient: installing a temporary railcar bridge is about one-third the cost of a normal temporary bridge.
They are designed to hold up until a permanent bridge is installed. Lawrence hopes all contracts for permanent bridges will be in place this spring, and NCDOT aims to have all the bridges replaced in two years.
In all, NCDOT documented 1,526 instances of storm-related damage to roads and bridges throughout western North Carolina. As of March 2025, six months after the storm hit in September 2024, 1,306 out of 1,454 roads and bridges that were closed have reopened.
Once the permanent bridges are in place, the agency plans to keep the railroad cars in inventory and spread them across the state so they can be used for future emergencies.
To see how NCDOT handled its biggest road repair challenge after Hurricane Helene, watch this Sci NC story.
Engineers work on Interstate 40 after Hurricane Helene's rushing waters destroyed half of it.