Danbury service suspended due to high water.

I've heard it may take up to a week to repair the damage. Hope the Gennies in Danbury Yard have lot's of fuel!!

Clean Cab wrote:Thank God that MN patroled the track before 1811 left Danbury!! This could have been nothing short of a disaster. Kudos to the track foreman who spotted this and literally saved lives!!

I was on 6873 worried I was going to be stuck in Danbury prier to the departure due to flooding. I thought the whole suspension this morning was because of the flooding in Branchville. Since I had my car parked at Merrit 7 I thought it might be worthwhile to drive back to the area and got plenty of camera shots. 6870 made it back to Danbury ok I saw but went through Branchville station slowly. what I don;t understand is why did they not drive any of the "bombers down toward Westport if they knew that Flooding was coming for the morning commute.

MNCRR9000 wrote:Were the washouts on the Beacon really that bad that they couldn't move them west out that way?

I thought the Beacon is completely out of service and nobody is qualified on it.

Clean Cab wrote:I've heard it may take up to a week to repair the damage. Hope the Gennies in Danbury Yard have lot's of fuel!!

the gennies all shut down and plugged in, the Bl20's are on auto start and can last a few days

DutchRailnut wrote:There won't be service for several days, but maybe the Bethel police dept is in charge.
currently we are operating 7 buses and have 8 MTA buses on standby.
buses run between Danbury and wilton from where train service is provided.

http://www.mta.info/status/serviceStatus.html
Some stations like Reading and Branchvile are still unreachable cause roads like route 7 and 53 are still partially closed due to flooding.
3 maxibombs and two mini's are trapped in Danbury yard with no way out.
Beacon line has some washouts and Maybrook east is still out of service from Botsford to Derby.

Might as well just abandon the whole Beacon Line, with so many portions washed out, and most of the line intact is so heavily speed restricted (10 MPH or less, nothing but Stop and Warns, etc.), no freight usage, nothing. There is no point in keeping it, as it seems totally useless, and seems MNR has no intention of revamping the line any.

MNR's #1 Conductor wrote: Might as well just abandon the whole Beacon Line, with so many portions washed out, and most of the line intact is so heavily speed restricted (10 MPH or less, nothing but Stop and Warns, etc.), no freight usage, nothing. There is no point in keeping it, as it seems totally useless, and seems MNR has no intention of revamping the line any.

watch gas be $6 a gallon gas next year lol... have you seen the ROW which includes that area amtrak wants to use for their 220 MPH high speed rail for 2040 I could agree for abandoning it for now.

Holy hopping hippos that is a washout all right! What is the plan for repair exactly?

theozno wrote:

MNR's #1 Conductor wrote: Might as well just abandon the whole Beacon Line, with so many portions washed out, and most of the line intact is so heavily speed restricted (10 MPH or less, nothing but Stop and Warns, etc.), no freight usage, nothing. There is no point in keeping it, as it seems totally useless, and seems MNR has no intention of revamping the line any.

watch gas be $6 a gallon gas next year lol... have you seen the ROW which includes that area amtrak wants to use for their 220 MPH high speed rail for 2040 I could agree for abandoning it for now.

Bingo. That's exactly what they bought it for. Just because it isn't in use and ready at the drop of a hat for equipment moves in emergencies doesn't mean it's a useless or frivolous asset on 30-year timescales. They're very unlikely to abandon...the middle-ground railbanking statute allows for it to get designated OOS with reactivation at-will rather than have to go full-blown landbanked with slim odds of ever de-abandoning.

It wouldn't have made a difference here anyway. Unless MNRR threw down a new junction in Brewster to connect the Beacon Line 400 ft. west to the layover yard it's another 2 miles north and an awkward reverse move to switch between lines. With the washout pretty close to the end of the branch and not a lot of equipment stranded it's unlikely they would've gone to fetch it even with an in-service connection since the repairs are of 2-3 day variety. You'd have needed to see something a lot more catastrophic like the river trestle near Merritt 7 getting knocked out long-term for a patch reactivation of rescue track to have been desirable.

What is the repair plan for this? Are they going to insert drain pipes to prevent future incidents?

F-line to Dudley via Park wrote:It wouldn't have made a difference here anyway. Unless MNRR threw down a new junction in Brewster to connect the Beacon Line 400 ft. west to the layover yard it's another 2 miles north and an awkward reverse move to switch between lines. With the washout pretty close to the end of the branch and not a lot of equipment stranded it's unlikely they would've gone to fetch it even with an in-service connection since the repairs are of 2-3 day variety. You'd have needed to see something a lot more catastrophic like the river trestle near Merritt 7 getting knocked out long-term for a patch reactivation of rescue track to have been desirable.

And I'd add that even if one of the bridges were to go out and put the line o/o/s for weeks, it would still likely be cheaper to rescue the stranded equipment via the HRRC through Pittsfield and then CSX to either Selkirk and Harmon or Springfield and Cedar Hill.

HBLR wrote:What is the repair plan for this? Are they going to insert drain pipes to prevent future incidents?

I would doubt it. I think this was basically a freak occurence caused by 4" of rain falling on 1' of icy snow and frozen ground.

I've only seen pictures, but my guess as to what happened is that the lineside drainage ditch was blocked by ice, snow, mud or some combination thereof, which caused the runoff (which can be startlingly intense when you have hard rain falling on ice, which is what the snowpack in upper Fairfield county was as of Saturday) to start flowing over the top of the embankment. Once water starts doing that it will erode loose material quickly until the whole embankment fails.

Some more photos

Not something you can tip-toe across.

HBLR wrote:Holy hopping hippos that is a washout all right! What is the plan for repair exactly?

Fill - lots of fill.......

Nice shots, mgbcab.

M8s won't solve that problem!!!!