Amtrak Snow Storm Shut Down

Big difference in 1945. Enough men on hand and enough equipment close by to tackle the job. I'll bet the passenger trains ran late but they still ran.

sd80mac wrote:

charlie6017 wrote:Would make sense if CSX and NS deploy empty hoppers to ship snow down south like
Conrail did during Blizzard of '77.

Charlie

and they did that again in 1999 with 52" of snow in Rochester or the famous October snowstorm in buffalo - I cant remember which storm..

Yeah that's right! I had forgotten about that early January snow in '99. We had two storms a few days apart and
we were swamped!

Good memory!

Charlie

Found this on the NS website.

Norfolk Southern operations have been impacted by extreme lake effect snow in the Buffalo, NY area. Record setting snowfall, road conditions, and road closures has curtailed Norfolk Southern operations in and around the Buffalo area. Customers with rail traffic destined to or originating in the Buffalo area will see a disruption of service over the next few days. Shipments normally moving through western New York will be detoured over other routes, likely resulting in additional transit time with 24-48 hour delays.

http://www.nscorp.com/content/nscorp/en ... oarea.html

What I saw on Train Orders, is that due do the snow situation in Buffalo, CSX Q090-18 will be taking the old B&O line through Sand Patch with 3 UP EMD's, maybe some intermodals and crude oil will most likely have to take the old B&O as well... One of my Facebook friends say that due to height restrictions on the B&O not all intermodal trains can run the line. So I'm thinking CSX will mostly likely to get some track rights from NS to run the Pittsburgh Line! That will be interesting especially with more snow coming to Buffalo!!

And yet winter hasn't started yet, this will be a very long and interesting winter for CSX & even NS!


-Scott

The problem is a cold snap blowing over the lakes; once they freeze over, this kind of stuff pretty well stops. But that doesn't usually happen until January or so.

Also in the middle of all this is the WNYRHS Train & Toy Show, this weekend. The weather's supposed to be better by then - but who will come to the show when its finally decent enough to start digging out?

pumpers wrote:There are confirmed depths in the 4 - 5+ foot range just east and south of Buffalo. http://forecast.weather.gov/product.php ... &version=1" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;
And another 2-3 feet predicted to come starting tonight up to Friday night. I don't care what kind of spreader you have and how powdery it is supposed to be, this is crazy... I can't imagine there won't be lots of trains held up and detours. Maybe close to a week with no Amtrak.
JS

Here is a partial screenshot of that link, since they will probably remove it in a day or so. The number in the first column (location), if any, means miles, such as 2 miles SSE of ____. The second column is actual measured depths (in inches) .

What about the snow jet that hangs out at the CSX Ohio St yard?

Just north of the heavy hit areas or does the driving ban effect the railroads too

rottentie wrote:What about the snow jet that hangs out at the CSX Ohio St yard?

Just north of the heavy hit areas or does the driving ban effect the railroads too

CSX has send the SB1000 Snow Blower from Selkirk to Buffalo to get the all the snow off the tracks. Left this morning and should be in Buffalo as of now!


-Scott

I remember we would run our passenger trains back in the (and I'm referring to PC and Conrail) day regardless of the snow. I know the conditions in the Buffalo area are rough right now...but we would at least try to operate some semblence of service, and often we would be the only option available, we may be running late (hours late too!), but we would be runnng.
And yes, I remember the picture of the Amtrak Rohr Turboliner stuck in the snow north of Exchange St. Station back in '77---but the Turbos weren't very good in heavy snow conditions.
My point is, Amtrak should be making some effort to restore service to the Buffalo/NFL area.

ScotCP356 wrote:What I saw on Train Orders, is that due do the snow situation in Buffalo, CSX Q090-18 will be taking the old B&O line through Sand Patch with 3 UP EMD's, maybe some intermodals and crude oil will most likely have to take the old B&O as well... One of my Facebook friends say that due to height restrictions on the B&O not all intermodal trains can run the line. So I'm thinking CSX will mostly likely to get some track rights from NS to run the Pittsburgh Line! That will be interesting especially with more snow coming to Buffalo!!

And yet winter hasn't started yet, this will be a very long and interesting winter for CSX & even NS!


-Scott

If you are referring to the "Old Main" line, you are definitely correct about being unable to run double stacks -- three tunnels between Balt and Parr's Ridge have height restrictions. Not sure what the current situation is on the Metropolitan Sub as CSX has been feverishly modifying tunnels and some road bridges to handle doubles. Last that I knew, one "short" tunnel and one bridge remained to be modified but they were to be finished this Fall so it may be open by this point in time.

I should point out that CSX has other options beyond coming down to Baltimore and then west from there. Since the snow is primarily south of Buffalo, CSX could detour north to Niagara Falls and across Canada to Detroit on either CP or CN, for example. Or even something involving the NYS&W, NS Southern Tier, and WNYP (from CP).

Another question is how the CSX St. Lawrence Sub is faring since north of Watertown also received a big dump.

Poppyl

The Buffalo Southern is effectively shut down for the BSW mainline operations until the snow event is over. The focus of the snow has been from Hamburg to South Buffalo, or approximately 4 miles of our line. Of course it is centered on the shop facility where the locomotives are house and crews report. The roadways in the area are still closed and crews would not have been able to report up to this point. Our D&H Jordan Spreader is covering one switch now to facilitate getting locomotives out of shop for movement. It is ready for service and will push 6 feet of snow out of the way with no problem. The real problem is uncovering the required switches....it will take the back hoe and other machines to help uncover them, oh and a lot of shoveling just to see them.

Most all customers on the line are in the same boat, and since they rely on truck transportation of products, this storm has stopped all of their operations as well, so there is no need for service as of yet. Also, with the snow obstructing NS/CSX/BP yard movements as well, it will be several days after it stops before any new shipments are expected.

One thing of note for NS movements through Buffalo, the BSOR Main from Blasdell to CP Draw is currently their only route open to send trains east or west through Buffalo. As the snow piles up, this may also become a parking lot. Especially if they have no siding or switches available to handle the movements.

Our contract switching operations at Dunlop are not effected at this time. (other than tough for crews to get from home to plant and back)

I am sure a plow extra will be required, but for now we wait it out.

Thanks for the update Pat, and good luck with the snow fighting.

It might be worth pointing out to those who have not had the fun (?) of doing so, how hard it is to tell where you are when there are a few feet of snow over everything. You may know there is a switch or derail "right around here somewhere", but when it is all white and level you have to take a pole and poke it into the snow repeatedly to find the stand if it's a low-stand switch. It's amazing how far off you can be. And floundering around in 3 or 4 feet of snow wears you out in a hurry!

Jim Kaufman wrote:I remember we would run our passenger trains back in the (and I'm referring to PC and Conrail) day regardless of the snow. I know the conditions in the Buffalo area are rough right now...but we would at least try to operate some semblence of service, and often we would be the only option available, we may be running late (hours late too!), but we would be runnng.
And yes, I remember the picture of the Amtrak Rohr Turboliner stuck in the snow north of Exchange St. Station back in '77---but the Turbos weren't very good in heavy snow conditions.
My point is, Amtrak should be making some effort to restore service to the Buffalo/NFL area.

I believe there are multiple counterpoints to be made here. For one thing, Amtrak is still at the mercy of the host railroads (in this case, CSX). If CSX doesn't have a clear line, Amtrak can't really do much... What are they going to do, ram 6 foot snow piles? We're not talking just drifts here, either. The snow is literally piled 6 feet solid in some places. Drifts are relatively "quick" to ram. Not this stuff. An NS train came to a grinding halt and sat in Alden for a number of hours yesterday because the tracks were impassible. I wouldn't doubt that CSX likely had a similar situation.

As for getting trains stuck, yes, back in the day people had a different view on things. Nowadays Amtrak would (and has) face a PR nightmare if they had a train of people stranded in the middle of a line miles from a station. People would be suing left and right. Rather them cancel service than have them go bankrupt from lawsuits.

rls62 wrote:I work about a mile west of MP367 in Rochester and there is an eastbound Amtrak train that has been parked on the tracks since at least 5pm yesterday.

That's probably the morning train 280, which isn't reported by Amtrak.com. A post in the Amtrak section of this Group says that the Eastbound Lake Shore Limited that left Chicago on Monday evening and arrived in New York Wednesday morning rescued its passengers. Except for 280, all of Tuesday's Eastbound trains from Buffalo arrived in Rensselaer about 1:00 Wednesday morning.

rls62 wrote:I work about a mile west of MP367 in Rochester and there is an eastbound Amtrak train that has been parked on the tracks since at least 5pm yesterday. It's right at the popular railfan site near the intersection of Blossom and University.

Earlier I did some checking of the trains on Amtrak.com. #284 had left Buffalo-Depew at 1:14 pm, #48 at 1:29 and #64 at 1:43. #48 got to Rochester at 7:02 and #64 at 7:35. No time was shown for #284 at ROC; however both #48 and #64 got to Syracuse before #284 did. With #284 having left Niagara Falls at 6:50 am, I think that #284 was awaiting a recrew.
Did Rochester get hit with any snow?
Andy