Here’s an interesting article.
http://www.islandnet.com/~see/weather/history/tornadotrains.htm
Thanks for the link. This forum doesn’t properly activate a link when using Safari.
Interesting item. UP RR had a tornado hit a train at Buffalo Creek NE in May 2005. Derailed about 15 intermodal units.
BNSF has had straight line winds derail a number of trains. This year, they had one at Luverne, ND and in the past few years also had units blown over on the Transcon in Oklahoma and on one of their bridges in MT. The Montana situation is owed to winds funnelling down a valley which increases velocity.
A little while back I was the UP Harriman Dispatch Center and was watching the screen for the Iowa dispatcher. On the Kate Shelley Bridge near Boone/Ames, IA, there is a wind-speed display visible to the dispatcher. I believe that they’ve similarly had intermodal train(s) blown off the bridge. I seem to recall an APL stack train that ended up down in the river valley below the bridge.
Kansas is tornado alley and in a couple months we will be in the heart of the severe season which i can easily do without. Interesting tidbit on the subject, about 15-20 yrs ago I watched a northbound Santa Fe pass through Wichita. At about the sametime on my am car radio, a tornado warning was issued to Harvey County, the next county about 15 miles north. A little cloud developed, but never amounted to anything. While listening in on the SF on the scanner, never once was the train crew told by either the dispatcher or Newton yard about possible bad weather. Of course that was back in the “old days” of the 1980’s when doppler radar and such was still in the testing faze.