Happy New Year,
I was monitoring my scanner the other day when a Wilmette Public works plow driver was crossing the tracks and reported something snow related was on the Tracks. UP was notified and they sent an inspector and trains had to slow down. So what are some of the common weather related track obstructions this time of year? Thank you
Ice, snow, rocks, trash…all could get stuck or frozen in between the rail and the planking or fabric making up a highway crossing…thus the railroad would have to either sent men to the site to clear the obstruction or a flanger or plow with flanger would have to be used to clear the obstruction.
Ice in crossing flangeways is a definite consideration this time of year - frozen in solid enough, the ice could lift the wheels off the rails. Given other considerations (like crossings on curves, additional ice and snowbanks), that could lead to a derailment.
Switches are a definite pain in the kazoo in winter weather. If you want to hang up a mainline, let the dispatcher get an indication that the switch heaters aren’t working… And there’s a reason switch brooms have that metal spud on the handle end.
Might have been the windrows from the locomotives’ pilot plows across the road on both sides of the tracks - then complicated by being pushed back into the tracks on both sides of the road crossing by the road plows. Aside from the aggravation to each entity (railroad and road dept.), if either one gets frozen solid a real chore to break it out can result. (Think of what happens when the road plow fills in your driveway right after you’ve dug it out ! [|(] ) At best the result is a pile of snow at each of the 4 corners of the crossing, which if it gets high enough (typically 3.5 ft. or more here in Pennsylvania) can obscure the motorists’ view of the tracks. Have that happen next to a crossbuck or grade crossing signal, and removing that pile of snow can become mainly a hand-labor job.
Engines - because of their weight - are much less susceptible to having difficulty with frozen flangeways that cars, especially empty cars.
Speaking of frozen switches with the cold weather in the Chicago area frozen switches played havoc with Metra service. In fact A Metra train ran out of fuel at the Wilmette depot and had to be shoved into downtown by the train fallowing it. Listening to my scanner it sounded like the cold caused trouble with with trying to hock the two trains together.
I find it hard to believe that a commuter engine ran out of fuel on a Monday morning after crews had all weekend to service the equipment. More likely there was water in the fuel and the zero temperatures caused the freezing water to clog fuel lines and thus starve the engine for fuel. I have no doubt that there were difficulties coupling the trains together with the necessity of the trains be coupled to facilitate push-pull operation and the possibility of frozen communicating air lines that permit the push-pull operation.
It was fascinating for me (in the comfort of my 60 degree home office) to listen to the issues CSX and NS faced the past couple of days with the severe snow and cold.
The CSX mainline from Chicago - Garrett was pretty much single track with 17 trains dead at one time. They were out of taxis so yesterday they ran an extra westpound “10 pack power lite move” with nothing but locomotives picking up crews. Mean while NS seemed to have a little more luck moving their trains thru NW Indiana. The former NKP line to Ft Wayne seemed fluid, but the Chicago mainline had a number of dead trains.
Frozen switches were a major issue, as trains were told to take the switches out of power and use hand throw in attempts to cross over. Signal crews were in short supply as they were dealing with multiple locations such as Willowcreek, East Gary, and Pine on CSX and CP 482, CP501, CP502, and CP503 on NS.
Not much better on the roads here in NW Indiana. Interstates 80/94 and 65 were closed. Both were re-opened yesterday (1-6) but I 65 was closed south of Merrillville.
The 15’s hit us hard…15 inches of snow and -15 air temp. The NW Indiana region (affectionately refered to as “da region”) typically handles snow quite well due to the “lake effect”. We were pretty much paralyzed by Winter Storm ION.
As of this morning CSX is running trains and the NS local detector is stuck on “zero, zero, zero, zero”. NS is routing a train from the Chicago line to the NKP line this morning. The temp is up to -12.5 degrees here in Valparaiso and the sun is shining. Just another day in paradise!
Ed
Meanwhile CN seemed to have pretty good success moving its trains thru NW Indiana. Only one train in the neighborhood seemed to have severe issues, the CN395 which interchanges with BNSF in Chicago. It was recrewed on 1/7 at 630am and didnt move all day, parked at Lincoln, just east of Valparaiso. The crew was picked up by WB 391 around 1pm and taken to Kirk Yard.
A CN crew indicated the Kirk Yard hump operation was shut down at 2pm on 1/5 and there was a logjam getting in and out of the Gary, In lakeside yard. Probably the reason CN was able to keep fluid in frozen conditions is the nature of their operations. Trains are not concentrated for delivery to Chicago as CSX and NS. At Griffith, In trains either go to Chicago to interchange, to Markham Yard, Kirk Yard, Mattson to go south on the IC or to continue west on the EJE. Thus there are at least five routes for trains and they do not have the volume of NS or CSX.
This storm will go down in memory as a “perfect storm”, the warm moist heavy snow from the Gulf meeting the Polar Vortex at Chicago. Rain by this weekend will melt all this and create a new set of problems.
Ed
As bad as things may seem around the Chicago area at present - it doesn’t compare to the Blizzrd of 1967
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chicago_Blizzard_of_1967
I recollect my carrier sent ALL of it’s System MofW gangs to Chicago to help dig out the carriers facilities. One man I am familiar with went from his home in Southern Illinois as a part of a System Rail gang to Chicago and was ‘on the clock’ for 14 days - 24 hours a day - he ended up with a pretty hefty pay check at the end of that period of time.
Reading internet comment sections it seems like commuters on Metra were winning as usual, why do people do this if they wanna complain why not open a fourm account here?
Most of them have no idea that this site even exists and even if they did, whining is whining and no decision makers respond to whining, even if there are any decision makers that inhabit this forum.
They might learn something if not some professional railroaders would put them in there place. Speaking of hick ups on the Metra UPNW line a train crew was low on HOS time and dropped everyone off Clyborne before expressing to Crystal Lake. My question is why wasen’t UP Commuter control or crew management made aware of this before the train left downtown?
Can’t speak for Metra & UP and their rules, however, most Class 1’s are similar in this respect. Crew is to notify the Train Dispatcher when they have 2 or 3 hours left to work (the specific number of hours may vary by carrier), so appropriate arrangements can be made for a recrew or other handling of the train. What the internal communication paths and responsibilities are within Metra and UP are unknown to me.
I had a similar experience last fall. I was catching a train back home from the city and we were stopped by problems at Western Avenue. It took nearly an hour for them to clear things up, and we continued west. Before we got going very far it became apparent to someone that the crew was going to run out of time. So all passengers (except for those destined to Elburn), including moi, were dropped off at Oak Park and the train highballed to Elburn.
The crew schedules for these trains are tightly made (i.e., a given train has a crew that went on duty at a given time, and will consequently die at a given time–usually an hour or so after they finish their last run), and a delay as long as this rarely occurs. But when it does, what are they supposed to do? If they had left Ogilvie already, there probably isn’t another crew ready to just jump on and take over, or even a rested crew that could handle the train frm the terminal. If (big if) they had known about a delay coming and not known the duration, they might have been able to announce the “expressing” of this train before it left, and not left people stranded at Clybourn for however long (my guess is that it wasn’t too long). In my case, the following train had also been delayed, and we spent 15 minutes waiting at Oak Park. They had put us off on the north platform (which is larger than the one a westbound would normally use at Oak Park), and sent the following train up the same track…very thoughtful.
Those Metra folks, and the UP dispatchers they have to work with, are pretty good at thinking on their feet, and will do what’s right for the passengers. Today, when UP West was up and running decently again (the three
I wasn’t complaining at all I am just annoyed that most commuters just whine and complain and don’t talk about anything they would have done different