Has anyone heard if CSX or NS will be running any detours out of North Jersey due to the hurricane damage, flooding, etc?
Irene didn't appear to cause too many problems, likely because it affected mostly areas close to the seacoasts, where traffic is light, but Lee did some damage in Eastern and Central Pennsylvania. NS' Reading Line, which is less than 100 yards from my "sometimes" home, was silent for at least a day, but I don't know how much was due to Irene, and how much to Labor Day. Upstate, in the Susquehanna (North Branch) Valley, it was quie a different story.
Service on the joint NS/CP Sunbury line was suspended on Thursday, September 8th, (with one COFC move stranded at Nescopeck, Penna.) according to the operating company, some 25 of the 59 miles of track between the former PRR Buttonwood Yard and the connection with NS Buffalo Line at CP-KASE in Sunbury were affected in one way or another, but the huge washouts caused by Hurricane Agnes in 1972 were avoided .... a tribute to the people who rebuilt the entire line in 1998-99.
Crews began arrivung en masse on Sunday the 11th, and operation was resumed on the night of the 15th/16th. Just shows what can be done when the financial incentive is there, and makes one wonder what would happen if (and probably, when) service on CSX' West Shore Line is interrupted.
It's not likely to be so easy for the North Shore (former DL&W) on the west bank of the North Branch. Bloomsburg seems to have been the community hardest hit, with classes suspended at Bloomsburg State and the community's highly respected annual fair, largest in the state, cancelled. Some of the problems can be linked to floodwall improvements upriver, which diverted more of the runoff and caused record crests for about 40 miles downstream. Luckily Sunbury, which depends very heavily on a floodwall built in the 1930's, was spared.
