Still some ballast piles visible.
UP and BNSF also replaced the diamonds at Fremont NE on yesterday. The track there was scheduled for opening about 3am this morning.
Jeff
I do not recall seeing the tamper go down the siding after they dumped ballast on Sunday. Not sure if that was the reason for the abort by the local.
WP & MP Units
It didn’t. When the crew briefed with track forces after going on duty they seemed to indicate it would be ok to proceed with the understanding that the track had not been surfaced. What changed when they reached the switch I did not catch. All I heard, apparently from one of the track guys, was that he would have to make a phone call. The crew then indicated they would not proceed past the switch and reversed back to the yard.
Westbound BNSF has form B permission on track #1. Also BNSF track inspector looking over the diamonds
Looks like the maintainers are looking at the siding as well. Quite a breeze blowing.
Now an eastbound BNSF has been given a speed restriction of 10 mph on #2 track, which will be the first movement on #2 actually over the diamonds
Looks to me like a fairly good sized pile of ballast ON the spur. I don’t believe I’d want to run my train down there if I were the engineer or conductor.
So what’s the story on the EB stack train now passing over the diamonds on BNSF #2? It’s headed by a single unit and, as if that’s not odd enough, that unit was lettered “CITIRAIL”.
Added as it cleared at 1219: There was a single BNSF DPU on the rear. Nothing unusual about that but I’m still curious about the CITIRAIL unit.
Citicorp Railmark Inc (trading as Citirail Express or CREX) is known for leasing locomotives to the BNSF Railway because of their crisis to move oil trains starting in 2013
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Citicorp_Railmark_Inc._(Citirail)
Thanks to everyone for their reports and pictures on the replacement this morning.
That was some job!
Bruce
It looks like they are moving a little faster… did they raise the 10/15 MPH restriction?
Defintely faster on both BNSF Main One and UP Main One.
Diamond definitely not as loud as it was.
Is the UP track super-elevated at all there?
Thank you. [bow]
The google aerial view was updated and shows the new diamonds.
https://www.google.com/maps/@41.9199718,-89.0759166,241m/data=!3m1!1e3
I have listened intently to several trains now on all the tracks… Hardly a sound coming from the diamonds. I don’t think I have ever heard (not heard?) a crossing so quiet. Did they install some sort of new fangled frogs that don’t go bump in the night (and day)?
I dunno, but that link gives me an image that looks like the image on Google Earth dated September 2013 to me. The current Google Earth image is from April this year and shows the new diamonds staged west of the crossings. This is from GE Mac.
Hmmmmm…I opened the page in Explorer in W7 and find the image updated there, but Safari still has the old image. Even changing user agents in Safari still gives me the 2013 image. A puzzlement, I guess.
BTW, all of this stuff is running on a MacBook Pro.
I read somehwere, either in TRAINS or the net about plastic pads bolted under frogs to cushion the blow from the wheelsets. It is possible this why the sound is much lower.