The bitter cold & snow in some areas that will engulf much of the nation will give us much to write about. As to where ? almost anywhere. Here in the south ATL forecasts are for 20 degrees F & lower. That does not seem like much that you in the northern plains are getting but it is going to be the coldest here for the last 10 years. Probably there will be some pull aparts of rail since the balance temp of laid track is higher. Freeze - thaw cycles here will heave the subgrades in the south that are historically not as well built.
The bitter cold in the Dakotas will break, rails, wheels, axels, switches, etc. Also signal equipment may have more failures ? Air brake lines will freeze up preventing proper air retention. All in all not very pretty.
The snow predicted in the NE has already caused Amtrak to modify its schedules probably with many routes essentially straight railed. Amtrak anticipates many trees down over tracks and CAT.
Chicago not even predicted to go above 0 F will be interesting to see how the nation’s rail hub fares ?
Reports welcomed.
It will be a great follow on time for us rail fans.i
If enough ice collects in our telecom towers, it can fall and damage antennas, dishes, and coax/waveguide cable. That can cause outages that affect things like CTC, defect detectors, and dispatch radio.
A wind monitoring tower here failed in our ice storm. It’s now scrap in a pile on the ground.
I don’t recall ice being cited as an issue with this latest storm - it’s mostly the heavy snow, cold, and wind. Any of them can be a problem by themselves. Add 'em up and things can get dicey.
Our governor took the precaution of closing several Interstate highways in the affected area.
At this point I haven’t looked into what impact the storm actually is having, so I can’t opine on whether it was the right amount of preparation.
Well we know the freight RRs have done fairly well though slow. That slowness has evidently caused havoc with Amtrak schedules. Amtrak appears to be resetting its CHI operation by some very specific cancellations
Amtrak does claim an anticipation of lower ridership.
Amtrak has cut schedules on the Midwest regional trains approximately in half; the Lakeshore and Empire Builder won’t be operating.
Saw Metra reports of switch problems on UP West this evening (out in more open country somewhere); BNSF hasn’t had any major problems yet (those are the only two Metra services I monitor). However, BNSF had announced some cancellations of Monday runs already Saturday night.
I expect my inbox to be flooded with Metra advisories tomorrow.
And so it was…about 20 of them this morning, both BNSF and UP West, advising of late trains, cancelled trains, mechanical problems, and switch problems (including yet another failure at Western Avenue, which probably affected the Milwaukee Metra routes and North Central service). For some reason, a notice showing 15-to-20-minute across-the-board delays on Metra Electric came up on the UP West list.
Right now (10:00 a.m. and sunny) my computer is showing the local temperature as -17.
Balt, I didn’t even attempt to go out today. Pat cracked the door open to check for mail (there was none), and that’s it! I’m in here with a hoodie and gloves on.
Metra delays and annulments continue. About half of the Fleet (rush-hour scoots) on UP West was annulled; the rest are making different stops than normal. We had some scoots up to two hours late during the non-rush.
I understand that the South Shore didn’t run anything. I think it was just the snow; didn’t hear anything about wires down.
There were also a couple of incidents where Metra trains hit the bumping posts at the Chicago end of the line. One was at LaSalle Street Station (Rock Island District); I don’t know where the other was. Probably should have warmed the brake shoes a bit before the stop.
As a former South Shore rider, the one-day suspension of service didn’t surprise me. Almost the entire line from Hegewisch east is subject to lake effect snow and winds which causes problems with drifting. With the Insull-era equipment, it became relatively common for cars to be taken out of service with bad-ordered traction motors when the motors inhaled too much snow. In the late 1970’s, this led to a short suspension of service followed by a restoration of little more than rush-hour service initially, slowly working back to a full schedule as more cars were returned to service.