Midwest flooding continues assault on railroads

[NS Newsfeed]

ST. LOUIS — Flooding from central Missouri and Illinois extending into the South continues to disrupt freight and passenger traffic as St. Louis recovers and cities downstream brace for the rain-fed crests heading their way.

Troubles ranged from washouts and slow orders to annulled intermodal trains and barges unable to load grain on the St. Louis waterfront. Amtrak reopened its Kansas City-St. Louis Missouri River Runner service Sunday after a four-day interruption but expects to continue bus links on the City of New Orleans and Texas Eagle for much of the rest of this week.

"The river is still pretty high," Asim Raza, director of real estate for the Terminal Railroad Association of St. Louis, tells Trains News Wire. "Our grain customers are out of service, those that are right on the river.

"The Class 1s we serve are doing pretty well except for the issues they're having elsewhere."

Raza says TRRA is not experiencing any outages of its own although it shut down one line briefly last week when rising water neared, but did not reach, its track.

News accounts placed the most serious local damage in the area of Eureka, Mo., about 20 miles southwest of St. Louis on the Meramec River where the U.S. Geological Survey reported record flood levels. Across the region days of pounding rain totaling more than 10 inches in some places led to the flooding blamed for at least two dozen deaths, 11 or more levee breaches, hundreds of road and Interstate closures and extensive power outages.

Water spilled over the BNSF Railway main line and siding at Eureka on the Cuba Sub leaving behind a tangle of boats and trailers floated over from a storage yard. BNSF also reported a washout on the Cherokee Sub southwest of Springfield, Mo., that shut down the line to Tulsa, Okla., from Dec. 27 to 30 last week.

BNSF spokesman Joe Faust tells Trains News Wire that as of today the Cuba Sub connecting St. Louis and Springfield, Mo., and the River Sub running south along the Mississippi from St. Louis remain out of service.

"Affected customers have been notified of any impacts to their service," Faust says. "BNSF has inspectors across the network and the safe movement of freight is our priority.

"We are closely monitoring the flooding and its potential impact to our tracks and reroute trains in order to stay out of harm's way."

At the height of the flooding, Union Pacific reported four subdivisions in Illinois and Missouri — Jefferson, DeSoto, Pinckneyville and Peoria — out of service with 70 trains held or rerouted. By midday Monday, only the DeSoto Sub from St. Louis south to Poplar Bluff, Mo., was shut down with traffic diverted to alternate routes.

UP attributed the quick recovery to advance planning and staging personnel, equipment and ballast at key locations.

"Additionally, we are monitoring water levels at Pine Bluff [Ark.] and Memphis and are prepared to adjust operations if necessary," UP spokesperson Callie Hite says in an email to Trains News Wire.

As much as 10 inches of rain fell in northwestern Arkansas over the Christmas weekend, and for New Years the U.S. Geological Survey was reporting water levels in the Arkansas River approaching those of the historic 1990 flood. At Pine Bluff, both UP's classification yard and the Arkansas Railroad Museum sit above a slack-water oxbow off the main river channel.

"We've got pretty good levees," says Elizabeth Gaines, a volunteer at the museum, which is home to Cotton Belt No. 819, the last 4-8-4 built in the Pine Bluff shops.

By Dec. 30, Norfolk Southern had reopened its line from St. Louis northeast to Decatur, Ill., only to halt trains on the line running east from St. Louis to Princeton, Ind. NS says intermodal detours could delay deliveries by 24 to 48 hours.

Additionally NS says it annulled three intermodal trains that could not be detoured, two from Kansas City and St. Louis to Jacksonville, Fla., and another from Atlanta and Louisville to St. Louis and Kansas City.