I asked a few weeks ago but have kept wondering how things are coming along for the railways & port of New Orleans since Hurricane Katrina recently.
As far as I know all RRs are active again and shipping at the ports has resumed, this happened because the RRs and the ports did it themselves and didnt bother with FEMA or its f’ed up bureaucracy
NS had fished their track back out of Lake Ponchartrain within a few weeks of the hurricane. CSX recently completed most of their track work along the coast (i.e Mobile area.) CN was operating within a week or so. KCS had a lot of trees to remove and has since permanently closed their New Orleans intermodal ramp. UP and BNSF slowly worked their way back in over a few weeks.
Check out embargoes on the AAR website. That gives the detailed story on what’s still closed. Here they are listed by effective date: http://embargo.railinc.com/index.cfm?content=embargo_effective.cfm