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[quote]QUOTE: <i>Originally posted by ChrisBARailfan</i> <br /><br />Cause I am a casual fan I do not know about much about the workings of a railroad, but are some of you saying that UP or BNSF will stop a train because of severe weather, ie tornadoes? <br /> <br />I would think that as a dispatcher I would get chewed for saying that I stopped the BNSF Transcon for a tornado warning or some other severe weather event. I would think if that was done nothing would ever move some evenings in Kansas and Oklahoma. <br /> <br />I work in a open campus office complex and nothings changes when a tornado warning is issued, we stay at our desks or in our meetings and go about our business. <br />[/quote] <br /> <br />1. Absolutely they'll stop them for a tornado in the vicinity. Didn't used to, though. Not being facetious or pedantic, but I'm aware of a mainline hotshot TOFC train at the end of that last era that ran right into a known twister at speed. Dumped over 90 carloads of TOFC and tore up over a mile of main line. Do that a couple of times and you figure out really fast that it makes sense to stop the train. And that's not withstanding the crew risks (one of the crewmembers went to the investigation and testified that he thought he was going to die--and he was at that risk). The Jarrell TX tornado or a spinoff (sorry--really BAD pun) picked up and flipped the 26 ton tender of SP 786. See this photo (from another post here today just up above in this thread) for an example of the results if you don't stop: <br /> <br />http://vgalleries.com/templates/templatedispatch.jsp?templateset=default&template=single_image&pictureid=4460&prev=4459&galleryid=355 <br /> <br />2. Some stormy evenings in the alley, they don't move. Before they began stopping them for tornados, that was also the case. Severe storms have the nasty habit of snafu-ing the signals. <br /> <br />3. I would suggest your office staff take tornado warnings a little more seriously. That doesn't mean diving under the desk at the first sign of a warning (which generally covers a relatively large geographic area compared to the size of the vortex), but more prudence than the casual indifference you describe would be prudent. Might save your life one day.
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