This Christmas season has not been good. First the derailment near Dixon IL on Christas Eve morning. Then this one between Elkhart and Enterprise on Christmas morning.
Then Christmas afternoon a train yarding in Council Bluffs put some on the ground, blocking both mains. I was called to pull a loaded ethanol train out of CB about noon. (It was going to eventually use the line to Des Moines.) They didn't order a van for us, so we were late getting to CB. The yardmaster told us as we were getting ready to couple the engines onto the first half to just shove everything in the clear. There had been a derailment up at the old CNW yard. I asked him when it happened. He said about the time we arrived in CB by van.
I told the conductor that had the van been on time, we might have been going past that train when it derailed. Possibly into the side of our loaded train.
Then, the Dixon incident had them tying down trains that had no where to go. One was a 14000 ft manifest. The crew thought they had cut all the important crossings, those providing access to houses. They hadn't. There was one crossing that had a house down the lane that they didn't know about. The house had a chimney fire and the fire department couldn't get to it until someone was able to get on the rear DP and open the crossing.
Train blocks access to house fire near Valley (ketv.com)
The engineer behind me was called to put it back together to take east. (They made it about 15 miles before the Council Bluffs incident above brought everything to a halt.) He ran into some of the fire fighters at a convenience store. They were called back a second time to the same house.
Jeff
Why does a 36' Prestress Concrete Slab bridge (18' + 18') in the middle of of a cornfield suddenly decide to quit? Mason City Sub MP 86.5
.....Elves acting badly?
UP cannot get a break on lines it has acquired over the years. This one happened on the old CRI&P spine line.
Police: Train derails after small bridge collapses Iowa | weareiowa.com
Roads reopened after train derailment in northeast Polk County (kcci.com)
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