The track east of Woodville, WI (MP 45) is welded rail. The track west of there is jointed rail very bad condition.
Wheel flanges ride on top of the joint bars. The rail heads are worn to within a fraction of an inch of the web. Ties are starting the crumble. Trains wobble and creak along at a whopping 30 mph.
When is UP going to upgrade this 40 year old jointed rail to welded rail?
You don’t mention the traffic density of the Altoona Sub. I don’t think it’s huge. 30 mph actually qualifies it as class 3 track with a restriction. Not terrible. And Woodville is only 35 rail miles from a major railroad center. Even with light traffic they may be staging trains over that mileage. No need for speed. The UP won’t let it become class 1 track.
you act like this track is used heavily. heh
UP probably only upgrades track that’s used by coal and intermodal trains on a regular basis.
coal trains sometimes reroute through Altoona, but not often
intermodals are limited to single stack if they even reroute up through here. and i have never seen one pass through Altoona before. there are bridges too low for double stack trains to clear. so it makes it a real hassle.
now, as for trains that DO use this line, only 4 of them use the entire sub between proviso and the twin cities, and 2 of those trains are roadrailers, which are much lighter than the rest of the trains. so basically UP would be upgrading the line just to accomodate for a single manifest pair and some locals on various sections of the track. and that seems a tad wasteful if you ask me. if the track reaches a condition too poor, UP will replace the broken parts, sure but i just dont see any upgrades in the distant future.
I don’t know about up there, but UP just upgraded it’s track from about Necedah, WI to Glen Oak with 133lb welded rail. They have been working on it from late August till last Thursday.
The 63 car train loaded with all of the MOW equipment left Oxford last Thursday. It now traces with UP somewhere in central Nebraska.
Phil
The rail had been dropped already back when I came through from my trip to La Crosse.
I got lucky and cought 2 of the 4 trains meet in Wyeville… [oX)]
OH MAN!! a connie SD60 was on the roadrailer once? man i missed it! i caught an SD60I once though
I was suprised too when I saw it. I believe I took those shots on August 19th, 2007. It was the same weekend as the washouts along the Mississippi.
Great pics Steve!
Some days I count 10 trains. This past Sat and Sun I counted two.
where do you live exactly? the Altoona sub sees a lot for locals in the daytime, i just never count them when i say the track only has night trains. but i’m gonna guess you catch a lot of locals when you say you saw 10 trains
Baldwin (MP 40). Today, there were three trains in the night, four during the day, and two after sunset (so far). There should be one or two more before midnight.
Somewhere I read/heard that UP expects to move more coal on that line, because of capacity problems elsewhere. May have been Wisconsin railroad commissioner who stated that when interviewed on public radio.
Baldwin should see 2 local pairs, the manifest pair, and the roadrailer pair.
coal on this track? by that, do you mean regularily scheduled coal trains?!?! O_O
THAT would be awesome! i never see any AC44s or big macs up here! and this would surely bring more in!!