Many residents in eastern Capitol Hill have been kept awake the last couple nights. A pulsating collision noise, followed by a loud metallic echo, has been ringing throughout the neighborhood at all hours of the day and night. We heard the sound going strong on Saturday night; others reported it stopped in the wee hours of the morning, only to start again at around 4:30 a.m., continuing more or less uninterrupted until 11 p.m. Bright work lights shone over Congressional Cemetery, indicating some sort of construction by the Anacostia River.

It turns out that the nuisance is being caused by four cranes with pile-driving machines working on the CSX railroad trestle bridge over the Anacostia. As you can see in the image above, that involves a large metal weight being rammed against a steel pile, to drive it into the river bed. The night-time hours of this activity would be in violation of regulations put in place by the District of Columbia Department of Consumer and Regulatory Affairs. However, the fact that it is a rail bridge over a navigable U.S. waterway may mean that, once again, there is little that our scrappy little local government can do to put a halt to the work. A tip brought to our attention the following advisory issued by the U.S. Coast Guard to boat traffic in the area:

Mariners are advised that Corman-Imbach Marine, Inc. will be conducting emergency bridge repairs to the CSX Railroad Bridge, across the Anacostia River at mile 3.4, in Washington, DC through December 31, 2006. The contractor will conduct pile-driving operations that will not obstruct the navigation channel. The movable span of the bridge can operate when needed, however as repair work progresses, contract engineers may require electrical power outages disabling the operation of the vertical lift span for a limited period of time. Interested mariners contact the on-scene tug Ireland on marine band radio Channel 16 or 13 VHF-FM or the Baltimore office at 410-355-6121. Chart: 12289.