It has warmed up to positive temperature values here for the first time in over a week at 8ºF. The windchill is still -4º though.
I have had real trouble with the site in the last couple of days. I am now going to pass on a bit of information to freight car watchers like Carl that I tried to post when I saw it on the news last week.
The long process of merging the Potash Corporation of Saskatchewan and Agrium Inc. will be effective Jan. 2. The new company will be called Nutrien. I have no information on the new logo or any changes in reporting marks. This won’t affect any of the Canpotex hoppers.
Once again, Happy New Year everyone, if this post works.
Went to work this morning at Fremont. Temperature was -18 on the outskirts to -12 closer to downtown, according to bank displays. One manifest train, 12000 ft long, had air problems on the DP, enough that the first crew didn’t leave North Platte. Instead of replacing the DP or shortening up the train, they let it out after (I guess) “fixing” it. The DP was a SD70ACe, their air compressors have a hard time keeping up in good weather, I can’t imagine in sub zero weather. More problems enroute, so I heard. Second crew didn’t look like it was going to make it in, so a third (dog catch) crew was called. The train ahead of it, a Z train, also had engine problems. Enough that it wasn’t going to make it’s scheduled long pool crew change and was going to the short pool instead. Another intermodal train sounded like it was having DP air problems too, but would make it without a dog catch. I was lucky, I got a coal train that went around all that mess and didn’t have problems. Main cab heater even worked, sort of.
On the way, I saw a couple of places where new rail had been spliced in. In another place I saw a pull-apart waiting for attention. My neighbor is a signal maintainer and I heard his name mentioned, that he was coming out about 50 miles off his normal territory to help out. He got home just after I did and he said on his way out they had him stop at almost every control point to get switches to work right. He said today there were 7 broken rails between Missouri Valley and Nevada, IA. (The two repaired locations that I saw were west of Missouri Valley and aren’t part of the 7. The pull-apart would be.) Yes sir, 2018 is off to a great start.
Thank you for that information about the merger, Bruce! I usually see covered hoppers from one company or the other when I’m watching trains on either CN or CP, but rarely anywhere else. I’m not familiar with any cars that Agrium owns, just leased cars (but lots of them!). Conversely, it’s been a long time since I’ve seen any Potash Corporation leased cars. Something’s going to change with this merger, I expect–and this will help me make sense of what I see.
-11 in Peru, Indiana, right now, have been fiddling with my heater controls in the semi for the last four hours to get it comfortable in here. Forecast is -19 for the low, the run to Lafayette tomorrow morning should be interesting…
All of -7.8F here at the homestead right now, which is an improvement over last night. It’s supposed to be a little milder coming up, but we may see some weather from that system coming up the coast.
Oswego County is currently getting lake effect, upwards of a foot so far. Just a little light “dust” here right now.
We’ll see what the winds do later this week. Could be interesting.
We’re enduring that part of winter where it’s -20 at night and we question our sanity about why we live here. Our only consolation is knowing that the other, Northern Dakota is probably 20 degrees colder. Brrrr.
But we know, in no time at all it will be +90 degrees and 90% humidity and we’ll be questioning our sanity about why we live here. [D)]
Out of curiosity, I checked the weather in the area where I was born, Chugiak, Alaska. It’s currently about 45 degrees warmer there. I wish Canada would just send us cold, Canadian beer and not cold, Canadian air.
Coldest in three years here. Weather guessers blew it last as this morning already 5 degrees lower than forecast ( 14 F ) . When we saw the dew point at 5 F called it probably going to 11 F .Guessers be dammed. Moon looks even more beautiful in crisp cold.
Our worry is that last week of Jan - 1st Feb is usually coldest time around here.
Heard run on anti-freeze here. You in the north may have to put in concentrate to lower the -34 of 50 / 50 mixes. have fired up our block heaters for first time in couple years. Makes going out so much better especially mrs Streak.
Having grown up in Illinois, and then rescuing a lovely young lady from Wisconsin by marrying her, and then living in W. MI (Gr. Rapids) for 9 years of Lake Effect, I finally got smart, and 30 years ago moved us to Marietta, GA to escape all that. Or so I thought. An unexpected foot of snow 2 weeks ago, and this morning it was 12 degrees as I left for work. Feels like I never left the frozen north!
Well, up to +21F - but the wind has arrived, with a 25 MPH gust just making its way through. So the wind chill is still in single digits or less
Neighboring emergency services are currently dealing with an ice fisherman somehow stranded on the ice. Can’t work out all the details from what I’m hearing on the scanner, so I don’t know the exact situation. Wind (this is on a bay off Lake Ontario) seems to be a factor.
While the ice should be fairly stable after our prolonged cold snap, the wind could be a destabilizing factor. A few years ago a couple of ice fisherman were stranded when the ice sheet they were on broke away from shore… The were saved. Their equipment wasn’t, as there wasn’t room in the airboat to carry them and their gear.
I’m sure you, being raised in Michigan you’ve heard many stories about fishermen getting stranded on both Saginaw Bay and Lake Saint Clair. Seems to be a common occurence on both ponds.
The ones that are amusing as long as no life is lost are those who drive their pickups to their preferred fishing hole, and soon realize they are not only stranded on an ice floe but their insurance will not cover their losses when their truck sinks simply because they did something stupid.
Only once did I take my GTO on the ice, and when I heard it cracking I made a beeline for terra firma.
An uncle was a diver with the Oakland County Sheriff’s dive team years ago. One recovery they did was a Corvair. All the occupants (four teens) got out just fine, but the ice turned into a bowl under the car, with the only way out being uphill, clearly a non-starter traction-wise. The car ended up on the bottom.
I remember seeing cars/trucks on the ice on Kent Lake, where they oftimes used a tractor to clear the ice for the skating rink at the marina. The vehicles were usually parked next to a shanty, dragged out onto the lake and left there for the season.
For a good number of years a car was placed on the ice of the St Lawrence River and a pool was run when it would go through. It was secured with chain/cable, so it could be recovered.
Today that would get you a daily fine for every day it was in the water.
Today’s incident included not only the stranded ice fisherman, but his tent and snowmobile. The fisherman is now safely on-shore, but USCG expressed an interest regarding whether anything was left on the ice, so now they’re working on bringing the rest of his stuff in.
Back to work.Work busy.Ns was clear when I left work.Matt was off from school today.Seems the ice has a problem coming off the backroads for the school buses.Going to get colder.Might need to borrow Mookies mittens soon.
For what its worth, it’s warmer on Mars than many of our posters are experiencing.
As of writing, Weather.com lists the temperature as -2 degrees Fahrenheit with the wind chill making it feel like -18 degrees Fahrenheit outside the XRT studios in Chicao…
The latest readings from NASA’s Mars Rover Environmental Monitoring Station indicates the ground temperature on Mars at -6 degrees Celsius (21.2 degrees Fahrenheit) and the air temperature at -19 degrees Celsius (-2.2 degrees Fahrenheit).
Yikes!
If you’re looking for a silver lining, just know it won’t get nearly as cold in Chicago as it can get on the Red Planet. Acco