I can't ever see CSX using the corporate aircraft for a 'crew taxi'.
Never too old to have a happy childhood!
That's what it took to get to work yesterday, March 15.
After being in the motel in Fremont for almost 48 hours, I finally got called for a train out of the Omaha area. I was third of 4 crews called within about a 30 minute period. On the way down to the depot, the motel driver said that we would be coming back and they would save our rooms for us. Upon arrival at the yard office, the van dispatcher said all the roads out of Fremont were now closed due to the massive flooding in Nebraska. (They had deadheaded 4 crews home a few hours earlier and had been able to escape by van.) The van dispr had notified the railroad and was waiting back for their response. It was generally thought we would all tie back up at the motel.
The railroad called back. They had come up with Plan A. They were going to try to charter a flight out of Fremont for Omaha. Visions of a WW1 surplus Sopwith Camel popped into my head for some reason. They couldn't charter a flight, so they went with Plan B. They sent one of the corporate jets to get us. So all 4 crews were airlifted out. We all got trains, although they changed who was getting which trains. We made a slight step up, originally we were going to have to put ours together in Council Bluffs. Instead we got a manifest out of Kansas City. After our group, they sent the plane back to Fremont for 4 more crews. It sounded like this group were going to trade one motel in Fremont for one in the Council Bluffs/Omaha area.
The newswire item has a few pictures, one being the curve at Logan, IA. (It's captioned near Boone, but it's just east of Missouri Valley.) When we went on duty, someone had earlier talked to a conductor on a work train there. They hadn't dumped ballast yet because water was still up far enough that the MOW supervisor didn't want his people walking through water along side the cars while operating the ballast car dump doors. The water was going down and they expected to start dumping within an hour or two. By the time the first train, besides the work train, was ready to go through (about 5pm) the track had been restored and MOW was already gone. I was on the second train through. There had been about one mile under water and another mile or so where you could see where water had been up to the ties. The parallel CN still had lots of debris and a few spots where the ballast had been scoured nearly or completely out from under the track.
On the trip home there were numerous westbound trains tied down. All waiting for the tracks to be reopened. Last I knew, the Nebraska side still had many issues. They really got hammered.
Jeff
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