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BNSF Transcon main line washed out in California
It never rains in Southern California…
Saw a weather forecast the other day of a hurricane heading that way from the Gulf of California.
Daniel, you’re dating yourself. Don’t feel bad - I’m old enough to remember the song too.
It pours, man it pours… Albert Hammer
Words to the Albert Hammond Song: It Don’t Rain in Southern California. (Something like this):
…Got on board a westbound seven forty seven…cause my LA
bound train got stopped by heavy rain, which took out the main…Oh what a pain…but they say it never rains in southern California. Now this seven forty seven I’m on has just hit another monsoon over the Sea. Oh how can this be…So now we’re turning back to LAX…Oh well, nothing ever seems to ryhme when it rains in southern California. Oh it pours…Man it Pours!
Anybody heard of Santa Fe’s Temecula Canyon route to San Diego. The dry inland route that was washed down the river by the first sunny California rainy season.
Conductor from 3/4 says two BNSF trains are sitting on tracks where the ballast is washed out underneath. Wish SW Chief would reroute via Phoenix and ex-SP.
Yep it pours & washes out roads often too. Usually the railroads try to do better job on drainage but it catches them at times.
But seriously folks, take a lesson from this story.
Predictable storms come off the Pacific during the rainy season, October thru April and the railroad is adapted to that runoff. Northward tropical disturbances during the hurricane season sometimes infuse the desert areas suddenly with heavy doses of moisture…when it’s 114 degrees in the shade and within an hour or so the humidity goes from 20% to 70%…which gives birth to intense thunderstorms, widely scattered mostly in the high country many miles from where you’ve set up to supersede Steinhimer, Kistler and Hale.
You probably couldn’t recognize a 100-year water-coarse but the flash-flood----- many roiling feet of debris laden muddy water is coming at you as fast as the train you’re waiting for… Anvil thunderheads over mountains far away-----Find high ground out of channels for flash floods. You likely have not seen the rainfall which imperils…SFe, I know, BNSF, encountered flooding not predicted.That If BNSF missed, consider, railfans: the adventure, though it may be fatal, continues. I’ve Been There
Growing up in the desert areas in Southern California, I can attest to the severity of desert cloudbursts. They can get pretty wicked. It seems that mother nature always has a leg up on the best engineered railroad right-of ways.
This has happened before, but not at this precise location.
There is no way that you can afford to build a RR that will not experience washouts because they can and will occur at different locations. Santa Fe has been operating over this location for more than 115 years and has records of washouts.
If the BNSF “washout proofed” this location (two plus miles) it would cost many millions of $$ and there may never be another experience with this much runoff at this location
Occurred is spelled with two R’s.
Too bad that rain did not drop on the Yosemite forest fire…
I’d like to know if BNSF is using those “washout detectors” that one of their former engineers invented. I first heard of those things described in TRAINS, and had heard that they had already saved several trains by detecting track irregularities and setting all signals to red.