Stabilizing a Railroad Embankment in the Blue Ridge Mountains

Freight railroads are classified as critical infrastructure and are an important piece of the U.S. economy. Railroad tracks cover the entire nation, allowing freight trains to transport goods and materials between ports and other transportation hubs. We have shaped the landscape to construct America's vast network of railroads; we have flattened mountains, carved into hillsides, filled valleys and spanned gorges. As natural geotechnical hazards occur at railroad sites, it is critical to remediate the hazard in a timely and minimally disruptive manner to main­tain operations. Norfolk Southern Railway has mainline rail passing through the foothills of the Blue Ridge Mountains of Central Virginia that services about 15 to 20 trains per day. Along this rail is a 70 ft (21 m) high cross valley embankment fill that has experienced a long history of instability and numerous attempted repairs. In 2020, after a noticeable increase in rail movement, Norfolk Southern elected to have a compre­hensive geotechnical study of the embankment performed, install instru­mentation and ultimately stabilize the soil slope. The instrumentation and design of the slope stabilization system was performed by Schnabel in 2021 and was constructed by Goettle in 2022.