The Havana overpass will be "mothballed" for the winter as soon as they wrap up a few concrete-pouring items. The bridge is up and pretty much ready to go, but the schedule fall off until it was too late to get asphalt paving down on the approaches and at the Trent/Havana intersection. As soon as it's warm enough in the spring to pave, they will come back in, dress up a few items, and pave. At that time, it will be a matter of days. From today (11/17/11), it will be months.

NO (clear) vantage points from the overpass. The debris fencing will be the same heavy-gauge/tight mesh fabric as they put on the Freya overpass just down the line. The difference at Havana is that the total span is longer, so fencing will extend farther out from the tracks. Some decent shots can be made from Freya, but at Havana, it'll be worse. Another problem is that there is a pole line with a couple of thick, low-hanging cable company lines along the east side of the bridge (the "yard" side) that dangle right into any available shot.

"Bridging the Valley" is a multi-decade-long project just to fund and build the grade separations, let alone getting the railroads to want to play. The BNSF is pretty much being "forced" to accept the competition on its corridor. It's not even a negotiated trackage rights issue--it's the governing entities saying, "We are going to eliminate the crossings and all you have to do is to accept your competitor on your right-of-way." The BNSF has spent millions of its own dollars on the corridor in the past 15 years already to make improvements for itself.