Unconfirmed reports have UP preparing to bring out the rotary(s) due to its inability to push snow away from the track over Donner. This may be because of a Flanger getting stuck in snow yesterday causing a 19 hour delay to Amtrak’s eastbound CAL Z. The flanger delay may have allowed snow to build up on the tracks beyond flanger capabilities ?
Now once the rotary clears a path UP will have to triple efforts to push snow away with dozers and flangers. Rotary will clear only the track wide enough to clear train cars. Then the dozers and then flangers can push snow away from the track farther.
Would expect donner to be closed to traffic including Amtrak during day for MOW crews to do their dangerous jobs.
Don’t know how much snow pack they have there, but their “snow dozers” (esssentially Jordan spreaders) probably can’t “wing” it out any more - they’ve probably built a pretty solid wall of snow.
I would suspect that “Cats” will be out in force to push the snow away from the track, giving the snow dozers and flangers some leeway with which to work.
It’s possible they might plow snow onto one of the tracks and let a rotary clear it, too. I have no idea what their strategy is in that regard.