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Three months after Montgomery County finished its $450,000 restoration of the East Deer Park Bridge over railroad tracks between Gaithersburg and Washington Grove, the CSX Corporation is mulling whether to raise or raze the historic structure to make room for double-decker freight cars.

International shipping concerns are behind the push. The Florida-based company wants to prepare its 21,000-mile railroad network for the taller double-decker cars needed to carry the increased flow of cargo expected after the Panama Canal is expanded by 2015.

CSX's $840 million National Gateway initiative will affect 61 bridges and tunnels in Maryland, Virginia, Washington, D.C., Pennsylvania, North Carolina, West Virginia and Ohio.

At 19 feet 4 inches above the tracks, the East Deer Park Bridge, also known as the Humpback Bridge, will be nearly two feet too low for the taller freight cars.

Last November, the U.S. Forest Products Laboratory determined that elements of the 63-year-old span's timber support structure were "in an advanced state of decay and must be replaced as soon as possible."

Even though CSX had announced its National Gateway initiative six months earlier, the county's Department of Transportation said it did not hear anything definitive until January. Faced with the prospect of the bridge's collapse, DOT secured emergency funds and fast-tracked the 10-week renovation, which began in June.

"It was an absolute emergency," said Bruce Johnston, chief of DOT's transportation engineering division. "We had no choice."

The bridge reopened Aug. 24 to the fanfare of a press conference attended by County Executive Isiah Leggett, Gaithersburg Mayor Sidney A. Katz, Washington Grove Mayor Darrell Anderson and more than 50 others.

Later that day, Anderson got a call from CSX saying they had decided to move forward with the project — which he found especially puzzling since CSX had approved the county's renovation.

"To me, somebody's not listening to someone in another department," Anderson said. "It's a big organization, but I mean, my goodness, it's crazy to spend half a million dollars and then they come along and say ‘We're going to build you a new one.'"

Given the county's short-term urgency and the National Gateway project's still-unsettled timeline, CSX didn't see the need to get involved.

"This work won't be done for a while, so even if there had been a lot of discussion at the time, there wouldn't have been any work getting done," said CSX spokesman Bob Sullivan.

CSX will discuss its ideas for the bridge at a public forum at 7:30 p.m. Dec. 2 at the Activity Center at Bohrer Park, 506 S. Frederick Ave. in Gaithersburg.

So far, CSX would rather replace the bridge with a "similar structure," Sullivan said.

Washington Grove wants CSX to lower the tracks and would consider proposals to raise the bridge, Anderson said. Raising the bridge would make its "hump" even steeper, likely requiring the roadways to and from the bridge would be reconfigured, Johnston said. The county does not have a preference, but says there has to be a bridge: not having one there would create "a transportation calamity," Johnston said.

CSX sees lowering the tracks as the most disruptive option. In a Nov. 18 letter to Gaithersburg and Washington Grove, CSX said that doing so would cause "extensive train delays" for the 19 freight and 23 passenger trains that use the line every day on average — and would cost up to $4 million to modify the platform of MARC's Washington Grove station, rebuild the tracks' at-grade crossing at Ridge Road, flank the tracks with retaining walls, and devise a new stormwater management plan.

The bridge is listed in the county's historical atlas. But while this summer's renovation required approval from the Montgomery County Historic Preservation Commission, Johnston and a county spokeswoman did not know if CSX would have to abide by those restrictions.

CSX does not know, either.

"We'll explore it, but we're not certain it would have an effect," Sullivan said.