Received the following via email.
New Jersey Interstate 280 contractor S.J. Groves & Sons Construction Co. built the new highway around Eagle Mountain in Essex and Morris counties using a temporary, standard-gauge construction railroad for moving tremendous volumes of earth and rock. In preparation for the earthmoving phase of the project, Minnesota-based Groves utilized the same Cleveland, OH-based firm, McDowell-Wellman Engineering Company, that had earlier designed the temporary construction railroad used by Oro Dam Constructors to build the major dam at Oroville in northern California.
Just as it had with the Oro Dam project, McDowell-Wellman arranged for a pair of conventional, high-horsepower locomotives to be built by General Electric in October, 1969 for use on the I-280 highway project. The two 3,300-horsepower engines were manufactured at GE's locomotive plant in Erie, PA. These two new diesel-electrics engines were supplemented at times with a smaller, second-hand, 1,600-horsepower engine, also acquired to help build the Interstate.
Into 1971, the locomotives pulled and pushed strings of side-dump gondola cars that carried excavated material from the massive rock cutting operation to where fill was required to build embankment. A highway bridge on westbound NJ I-280 is said to still have the extra beams in it that were used to reinforce the structure to handle heavy rock trains. After the engines completed their assignment for S. J. Groves in the Summer of 1971, they were sold to the Burlington Northern Railroad for use in system main line service.
Here are four representative photos of this interesting highway earthwork operation:
http://www.railpictures.net/viewphoto.php?id=309957&nseq=2
http://www.godfatherrails.com/photos/pv.asp?pid=210
http://www.railpictures.net/viewphoto.php?id=309912&nseq=3
http://www.godfatherrails.com/photos/pv.asp?pid=802
Here is an example of what you can find at the links above. More pictures at those web sites. Following picture by John Dziobko.
