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Route 19/21 near Waynesburg to close next week for construction

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Crews spent Wednesday positioning a large crane to hoist the beams into place as they plan for nightly closures of Route 19/21 next week.

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A welder works on a new train trestle over Route 19/21, which will be closed each night next week for construction.

WAYNESBURG – A heavily traveled route through Waynesburg will be closed for nighttime construction next week as crews erect a new train trestle over Route 19/21 in Morrisville.

The nightly closures of Route 19/21 are scheduled to begin Monday night, weather permitting, and is expected to continue until Friday morning.

The detours will run each day from 9 p.m. to 6 a.m. as crews install large steel beams to build a new train trestle over the road, state Department of Transportation spokeswoman Valerie Petersen said.

Separate detours will be marked for passenger vehicles and trucks. Passenger vehicles will be detoured using Sugar Run Road and Porter Street around the construction area.

Trucks will follow another detour because of the difficulty they would have negotiating the sharp turn on Sugar Run Road, Petersen said. The truck detour will use Interstate 79 and Route 19, between the Ruff Creek and Waynesburg exits. Route 21 will be closed to westbound truck traffic at I-79 and to eastbound truck traffic at Route 19.

The work was originally scheduled to begin tonight, but when the beams were delivered to the site earlier this week, crews discovered one was damaged and had to be shipped back to the fabricator for additional work, Petersen said. The beam returned to the worksite Wednesday afternoon and crews spent the day positioning a large crane to hoist the beams into place.

The contractor, Gulisek Construction LLC, has asked for the overnight road closure at the construction site to allow it to erect the beams, which will span the area between the two already-constructed abutments on the west side of the existing overpass. There also could be sporadic nighttime closures during later parts of the project when needed, Petersen said.

PennDOT is replacing the railroad overpass over the two-lane highway and the adjacent two-lane bridge, carrying traffic over Ten Mile Creek, with new four-lane structures. The $15.1 million project is scheduled to be completed in fall 2017.

Staff writer Bob Niedbala contributed to this story.

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