Hot Water posted:New Haven Joe posted:Why would a railroad run a train across a bridge when the tracks were under water?
Where did it state that the "tracks were under water"?
Perhaps the dispatcher and crew didn't know that the river was above the track level?
Again, who stated THAT?
Does water completely covering the tracks short the signal system causing a red signal at the end of a block?
No.
Maybe this track doesn't have signals?
Wouldn't have mattered. If the water was even up to the ties, the crew would NOT have even attempted to cross that bridge.
NH Joe
As information, this is the old Omaha Road, a subsidiary of C&NW, merged into UPRR several years ago. This line, which runs diagonally northeast from Sioux Falls to the Twin Cities was "dark" to somewhere around St. James and then had ABS most of the way on to St. Paul. I drove alongside this railroad five years ago and it was still dark out there in northwest Iowa. It has many curves and the rail looks to be around 90 lb. A pretty decent 40 to 49 MPH railroad.
