Anybody have any information about a derailment just south of the yard in Neenah? I walked to the area because the road was blocked by a Canadian National truck about 4:30 this afternoon and there were still two grain cars on their sides and two more being set back on the tracks by Hulcher. I was told ten empty grain cars total were involved. At least one signal mast was hit.
Don
http://www.postcrescent.com/article/20101227/APC0101/101227102/Railcars-damaged-in-Neenah-derailment
This should be the link to the article. (I hope it works; I’m still learning how to do that-SORRY!)
I activated your link. Quite a mess thanks to a broken rail that took out 10 cars. 7 were on their side and three were on the ground but upright.
Here’s a link to my pictures from today:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/danbraun/sets/72157625684120082/with/5297177670/
Thanks to both of you for the pictures and the link to the newspaper article.
Don
You’re welcome Don. Hulcher’s boys finished up around 7 PM. All ten cars rerailed and strung together. I believe they headed straight for NFDL for inspection, etc. Now the ground crews are busy fixing the infrastructure so things can keep rolling and get back to normal as soon as possible. I’ve got a couple dozen shots to process and get on Flickr. See the link in my earlier post for the collection. Questions/comments welcome.
Dan, did you happen to catch the name of the town on the side of that Alberta Government Grain Car ALNX 396211. There are websites devoted to just keeping track of each of those cars. Most of the cars are named after Alberta towns, but not all cars. That car having an “N” in the reporting mark is assigned to CN. A “P” would be a CP car.
The strange thing about how they named those cars is that they never classified them by whether the town was served by CN or CP. Some cars have town names on them that aren’t served by the railway the car is assigned to. And some miss by over a hundred miles. A good example of government bureaucracy in action, the left hand did not know what the right hand was doing.
Great pictures and captions, by the way.
Bruce
here’s a better pic of the car. Not my photo or my account
Thank you SOO 6604.
I see that is one of the non-named cars. It does have the controversial HF logo though, beside the words “Heritage Fund”. PC types thought that the HF looked too much like a Swastika and they stopped painting it on later paint jobs.
Bruce
I’ve railfanned this exact site in Neenah and the road alongside the track is very well traveled so it’s a good thing the cars seemed empty as that could have caused a lot of trouble for residents who live in the apartments accross the street from this site.
Not only are some of those ALNX/ALPX cars not named, there may be two or three cars named after the same city.
Of course, Trekkies would love to see the ones that say to take an Alberta break, and visit Vulcan!
It took about 30 hours to get the scene back in action. By just after noon today the last wiring gremlins were being ironed out and trains were rolling over both the mainline and the Neenah Controlled Siding (NCS). I know all the signals are now working, the heaters & power switches are repaired and functioning.
I heard trains communicating with the RTC about a 25 mph restriction through the plant yet…wonder how long that’ll last?
Vulcan, AB has always been taken very seriously by the CPR. For many decades Vulcan along with Rosetown, SK used to alternate as the largest inland grain shipping point in Canada. There was a lot of money to be made by the CPR there. Rosetown was served by CN.
Back in the days of the wooden grain elevators, driving into Vulcan presented a very impressive sight indeed.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Vulcan_elevator_row_1960s.jpg
Each separate group of structures counts as one elevator. According to the related Wikipedia article at the height of the wood elevator era there were 12 elevators. All but one have been demolished to be replaced by two concrete ones.
Bruce