NS
With a forecast twenty foot storm surge, I imagine they’re moving about anything that rolls outa Dodge.
Other preparations, they are probably rounding up ballast cars and air dumps and loading them, pre-positioning generators, fuel trucks, track panels and bridge materials. They are making alternative lodging arrangements (sometimes renting portable bunk houses both for crews and MofW). They are getting chain saws tuned up and distributed along with reserving tree removal contractors. The signal dept. is removing crossing gate arms.
That and greater than two feet of rain in some places (over three feet possible). Glad I’m not in the eastern Carolina’s.
Per CBS news this morning.
CSX refused to allow City of Lumberton, NC to close off a levy that the CSX track went thru before Florence arrived. Took emergency declaration by Governor to allow various volunteers and military to now rush to close off the opening to prevent flooding in Lumberton. Why do these things happen ?
This is the old SAL line from Hamlet - Wilmington . Line is only remaining CSX line to Wilmington as all other ACL lines abandoned. Believe Wilmington once was ACL headquarters ? This line crosses the CSX “A” line ( Amtrak Meteor ) at Pembroke ( about 11 miles to the west NW ).
WAG (Wild A… Guess) management installed by the EHH pogrom never had to deal with Hurricanes in Manitoba.
Achtung
Pogrom - great definition of management !
The story got air time on ‘CBS This Morning Saturday’. Locals are attempting to sand bag the breach in their levee that the CSX tracks create to protect Lumberton from flooding of the Lumber River - the city was flooded by Hurricane Mathew two years ago - by the river.
Yes, for many years the ACL headquarters were in Wilmington.
Remember that the first line down to Florence ran through Wilmington. After the more direct line was built, the mileposts were relocated so they showed the shorter distance. (Unlike the FEC’s continuing to use the mileposts through East Palatka after building the cutoff trhat was used by all the trains that did not have to go through East Palatka.)
In the places where the railroad lines I’m familiar with crossed levees or went through flood gates, the railroads and the civil authorities were in pretty close communication when the floodgates/levees were going to be closed and planned accordingly.
CSX didn’t want to ‘play nice’ with merely local town officials. The EHHites don’t believe in working with local officials. Video from the scene showed the locals spreading sand bags across the railroad where it passes under I-95. There are no Flood Gates.
CSX piled up a freight on the SAL Charlotte - Hamlet line with hazmat . About 17 miles west of Hamlet. No indication if this was caused from Florence but ??
EDIT reported as a wash out . Who dispatched the train with out running a hi-rail ?
Manitoba has had lots of bad floods over the years, albeit not from hurricanes. Eventually they got fed up and dug a ditch:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_River_Floodway
But I would have thought Hunter’s cronies would have more vivid memories of this:
The Wilmington-Hamlet line contains the longest absolutely straight stretch of RR track in America, 76.88 miles IIRC. “Air Line” in SAL’s name was telling it like it was - another of the longest straight stretches of track in the U.S. was on SAL’s Miami Extension.
Now on wsoctv a 18 wheeler runs over a washed out road.
CSX is going to be on hot seat. Can we expect multi lawsuits over their refusal at Lumberton to allow aithorities to close an opening in Lumberton’s levy . CSX keeps putting out reasons for not allowing that are being refuted by various authorities.
Can this be because of the massacre at the top by EHH leaving no one with enough courage to make the various decisions cited in the article ?
I have no doubt that no one tried to ‘stand before the corporate wind’. I also expect a most all of the institutional knowledge departed the area after Hurricane EHH hit the property in March 2017 and was replaced with a institutional blank Canadian slate where Hurricane and coastline issues were not on the slate.