Eastbound Amtrak Southwest Chief hit an estimated 12 foot snowdrift near Mendota, Illinois yesterday (1/6) at around 5pm and remained stuck in the drift overnight. Making matters worse, Amtrak / BNSF also sent the eastbound Illinois Zephyr over the Mendota Sub 'Main Line' a couple of hours later in an attempt to assist / pull the Chief out of the drift. It also got stuck and remained in the Mendota area overnight. The eastbound California Zephyr was held in the yard at Galesburg overnight. Per Amtrak officials, all trains had their hotel power and enought supplies to accommodate all pasengers.
As of early this morning, Amtrak was going to attempt to bus all passengers stuck on the two trains near Mendota to either Chicago or Naperville. There was no final plan yet for the passengers on the California Zephyr at Galesburg.
Given the severe weather conditions and the limited number of trains that use the Mendota Sub, I was a bit surprised that the BNSF / Amtrak didn't attempt to reroute the passenger trains to the Transcon between Galesburg and Joliet. Of course, their were probably of lot of weather related complications going that way too.
As far as I understand it early this morning, Amtrak doesn't plan on running the westbound Chief, Cal Zephyr, Carl Sandburg or the Illinois Zephyr. Also, not sure of the status of the eastbound Chief or Cal Zephyr due into Chicago today.
CC
One correction... The local news media was reffering to the Illinois Zephyr. The IZ runs eastbound in the morning. So, it should be Carl Sandburg that was also stuck near Mendota. More details later.
http://gma.yahoo.com/3-amtrak-trains-hundreds-passengers-stranded-since-monday-124000233--abc-news-topstories.html
Never too old to have a happy childhood!
Chris30 Given the severe weather conditions and the limited number of trains that use the Mendota Sub, I was a bit surprised that the BNSF / Amtrak didn't attempt to reroute the passenger trains to the Transcon between Galesburg and Joliet. Of course, their were probably of lot of weather related complications going that way too. CC
Rerouting trains involves much more than throwing the switches to line up a different route. In this case I would expect the Amtrak crews to be unqualified on a alternate route. With the weather conditions I suspect the host carriers had already maxed out utilization of their operating resources (MofW, Signals, Crew Base) in handling their existing traffic with the extreme weather conditions.
The rotary is on it's way. Video posted on one of the Yahoo group lists I'm on of the plow train heading east through Iowa. Now I know why.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EYwYeHorN5Y&feature=youtu.be
Jeff
It was the morning Illinois Zephyr #380. It left Quincy almost 5 hours late due to the weather, so was behind the Chief. Amtrak didn't run any of the Quincy trains out of Chicago.
The former CBQ line has 8 daily Amtrak trains over the route, plus about 40+ freights (many are coal trains), so it has quite a bot of volume. The issue was that many freights were not operated due to crew shortages and safety concerns. The deep cuts near Zearing have long been a challenge to the operation.
Will the passenger cars be sent to Beech Grove for repair or can Chicago repair those cars?
Ed Burns
Amtrak trains were reported to have hit 12 foot drifted in cuts - following clip show removing 9-10 foot drifts in the flatlands.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YxCPWQ-K5KE
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