UP is having a bit of trouble.

[TB4JY]

I know this is not a NS story, but I did find it to be a interesting railroad story.

Trains won't get back on Cascades track for weeks
(The following story by Matthew Preusch appeared on The Oregonian website on February 25.)

OAKRIDGE, Ore. ? What is called the worst natural disaster to hit an Oregon rail line -- a January landslide that severed Union Pacific's main route through the Cascades -- will take much longer to repair than anticipated.

The massive slide 15 miles east of Oakridge has resulted in rail shipping delays and halted Amtrak's daily Coast Starlight run between California and the Northwest.

Union Pacific Railroad initially hoped to have the Jan. 19 slide cleaned up in weeks. Now it is saying late March, at the earliest. Others, including Union Pacific conductors and union members, predict the line won't be opened until late April.

"This is probably the worst railroad natural disaster in the state in all the years that the railroads have been in business here," said Robert Melbo, rail planner for the Oregon Department of Transportation and the agency's unofficial historian.

A month ago, a chunk of Coyote Mountain 20 acres wide and 200 feet deep sloughed off just above where the Union Pacific line winds up a timbered grade. A mix of mud, rock, fir trees and snow -- now referred to as the Frazier slide -- carried away a quarter-mile of track on the upper hillside and another 150 feet of track below. The slide ended up covering more than 40 acres.

"Originally, we thought we would be able to get the railroad back in a couple of weeks," said Bill Van Trump, Union Pacific's assistant vice president for engineering. "Now we think we'll be lucky to get it back in a couple of months."

In the meantime, the 15 trains that used the line daily are being detoured through Bend and Salt Lake City, causing delays of one to two days, said Zoe Richmond, a Union Pacific spokeswoman in Oakland, Calif.

At Weyerhaeuser's container board mill in Springfield, employees are ramping up to send box materials south for the California strawberry season, but empty rail cars have been slow to arrive.

"We are getting uncomfortably low in our supply, so we're having to load the cars as soon as they come in," said Meg Whipp, shipping supervisor at the mill.

Roseburg Forest Products reports a similar delay in getting empty railroad cars, while United Parcel Service is using trucks to carry packages it would normally send over the Union Pacific line.

The railroad is absorbing the extra costs, such as more diesel and work hours, Richmond said. And by and large, companies that rely on the line, which mainly carries lumber, steel, minerals and paper, seem to be taking the delays in stride.

"We're not hearing anything from the customers, so that leads us to believe they are at least tolerating it until such time as this thing gets resolved," Melbo said.

The closure is more dire for rail passengers.

Service on Amtrak's Coast Starlight, which previously carried about 1,500 people a day between Los Angeles and the Northwest, has been canceled north of Sacramento. Amtrak is waiting to take new reservations until it has a better idea when the track might reopen.

"I've had some calls from people who'd like to take this trip, and they are wondering if the train is ever going to be reinstated," said Ted Blishak, co-owner of Accent on Travel USA, a Klamath Falls travel agency specializing in train travel.

Starting Friday, Amtrak will offer bus service between Sacramento and Portland, with stops in Medford, Eugene and Salem. Amtrak Cascades service is still available between Eugene and Vancouver, B.C. Timber for 200 homes

On the slope of Coyote Mountain, yellow Caterpillar trucks with tires the size of dinner tables crawl up a lattice work of temporary roads, hauling out mud and debris and hauling in rock to stabilize the mountainside.

Before the work is done, the equivalent of 60,000 pickup truckloads will be taken away and another 40,000 loads brought in, Van Trump said. Already enough downed timber has been hauled away to build more than 200 homes, the railroad estimates.

The upper corner of the slide originated in a part of the Willamette National Forest clear cut in 1992 and replanted in 1995, but U.S. Forest Service geologists say the slide was not caused by the clear-cut.

"Slope instability is a natural part of the west Cascades ecosystem," geologist Doug Shank said.

At this point the Union Pacific has no reason to contradict that assessment, Van Trump said, adding that the true cause may never be known.

The Union Pacific's line is not the only one wrecked in recent months.

The Port of Tillamook's line from the coast to Portland is shut down after December flooding washed out sections of the track, causing $20 million in damage. Floods in 1996 led to $13 million in repairs on the same track.

The owners of Central Oregon & Pacific Railroad, which has a 120-mile line between Coos Bay and Eugene, closed it in September, saying three of nine tunnels were unsafe. The Port of Coos Bay and the state have been fighting with the company to get the line reopened.

The Union Pacific track near Oakridge has a history of slides. A Dec. 22, 1964, avalanche collided with a freight train, sweeping five rail cars downhill and a second slide carried away 100 feet of track.

Floods that winter also washed out nearly half of a 300-foot bridge at nearby Noisy Creek. Town gets shot in arm

While the repair work this winter is bad news for Union Pacific, it's been a boost to the nearby town of Oakridge.

Scores of workers have filled all the motel rooms and led stores and restaurants to extend their hours, helping local businesses get through the normally tepid winter tourist season.

"It's sad it happened, but it couldn't have happened at a better time for this town," said Randy Dreiling, owner of a mountain bike tour company and executive director of the Oakridge-Westfir Area Chamber of Commerce.

In town, workers in muddy boots pack the orange vinyl booths at The Sportsman Cafe or use the wireless Internet connection at the Willamette Mountain Mercantile while picking up warm socks or Carhartt jackets.

Every hotel room is booked until the end of March, and locals have taken to renting out their extra rooms to the 150 workers that the railroad has on 12-hours shifts at the slide.

Vivian Erickson thought she was going to have to take out a loan to replace the sign at The Oakridge Motel that a windstorm knocked down three days before the slide. Now all of her 30 rooms and two vacation homes are full, and she's already made back half of the sign's cost.

"There are more crews coming," she said. "And they are going to have to double up or use air mattresses."


Monday, February 25, 2008