Students Design Rail Observation Platform with Helical Piles Sponsored

Radford, Virginia, a town of about 16,000 people, was founded around the New River, but it was the arrival of the Virginia and Tennessee Railroad that caused the town to grow. Utilizing helical piles for its foundation, Virginia Tech architecture students designed a train-viewing platform to help preserve and celebrate this important part of Radford’s past and present.

The train-viewing platform, located on donated land behind the Glencoe Museum, serves as a piece of a comprehensive tourism development for the city of Radford. It overlooks the railroad tracks to offer visitors views of approaching trains in the beautiful Shenandoah Valley.

Under the guidance of Associate Professor Kay Edge and Assistant Professor Edward Becker, a team of architecture students designed and built the train-viewing platform. The main enclosures were made from hardwood cross-laminated timber panels. A deep foundation was required to support the weight of the structure and the live load of visitors. The site itself presented the team with numerous challenges. The platform was built on sloped ground with gas lines on both the upper and lower sides. Obstacles including old foundations and unused railroad tracks littered the ground. Additionally, a considerable amount of unused road tar had been dumped on the site.

CHANCE helical piles were selected as the ideal deep foundation solution for this challenging project and its limited-access site. The ultimate capacity required per pile was 20 kips so (6) SS150 8/10 helical ROCK-IT™ lead sections were transitioned to RS2875.203 wall pipe from 7-15’ below ground to bedrock. The piles were installed in one day using a mini-excavator utilizing a 6,000 ft/lb drive head. Walder Foundation Products LLC, the local distributor of CHANCE helical piles, was instrumental to the project’s success, offering design, product, and installation assistance to the college students for the benefit the entire community.