does the FEC RR evac Florida?

Irma couldn't have a worse path, along with its minor changes of path, to design the logistics of evacuation. 

From my understanding the northern most track for FEC is just across the St Johns River to a rail yard near the former railroad passenger station of Jacksonville, FL (currently the Prime Osborne Conference Center). Someone with better knowledge will clarify my errors.

The FEC RR does NOT leave the state of Florida. It's northern terminus is Jacksonville, FL. Also, since the FEC has no passenger equipment, and hasn't since the strike in the mid 1960s, it would be hard pressed to "evacuate" ANYONE from Florida. I would think the FEC has far bigger concerns with their equipment and physical plant, anyway.

The L&N bridge across the Ohio River at Cincinnati-Newport has loaded coal hoppers placed on it during time of heavy flooding.  I do not know if other railroads use the same technique.  John in Lansing, ILL

Joe..didn't think you meant the RR was evacuating people we all knew you meant moving personal and equipment to a safe local....which is what they did....(i hope)...

rattler21 posted:

The L&N bridge across the Ohio River at Cincinnati-Newport has loaded coal hoppers placed on it during time of heavy flooding.  I do not know if other railroads use the same technique.  John in Lansing, ILL

The Santa Fe tried that using locomotives over the Kaw River in the 1951 Kansas Flood.

Didn't work.

There was a book written about it:

Of course, conditions vary from flood to flood, but if the water wants to take the bridge, it will take the bridge.

Rusty

"The L&N bridge across the Ohio River at Cincinnati-Newport has loaded coal hoppers placed on it during time of heavy flooding. I do not know if other railroads use the same technique. John in Lansing, ILL"

The Missouri Pacific attempted the same thing on the Baring Cross Bridge in Little Rock, AR across the Arkansas River during the 1927 flood.  A train of cars loaded with rock was backed onto the bridge by my great-uncle Len.  It was not successful.  Pat B.

I remember Penn Central parked loaded hoppers on their Juniata River bridge in Lewistown, PA during the tropical storm Agnes flooding in June of '72.  It worked for them.  

The bridge is still there and used by the Juniata Valley Railroad to reach customers in the Lewistown, Burnham and Maitland areas.

Curt

Well I'm left to guess if they may have tried to move equipment Northward in the hopes that the damage would be less as the storm gets weaker. There wasn't a lot of time.

Who knows if they would have had the ability to move stuff in time, in a race with the storm? The original forecast showed the storm moving up the East Coast side.

 Not worth risking life over saving some equipment.

The NS parks loaded hoppers on the Rockville Bridge during high winds as the have had several Empty Double Stack Containers blow off the car into the river.Not sure about floods but as long as that bride has been around standing not sure if they worry about floods.

Always made sense to me. A railroad's ability to move large quantities of people is obvious. Of course, you need passenger equipment to do that. And someplace to take them. In other words, you need the type of emergency planning that we really don't want to do.

You may want to read LAST TRAIN TO PARADISE about Flagler and the FEC. I enjoyed it.

Gerry

I did, thanks.

You guys know that I said "equipment", right?

Joe I knew what you meant 

joe krasko posted:

Joe..didn't think you meant the RR was evacuating people we all knew you meant moving personal and equipment to a safe local....which is what they did....(i hope)...

Well, I figured some knew?

Some replies left me guessing? Not that I'm anyone important anyways. I am just trying to watch the damage overall.

You don't fool with Mother Nature...............

I don't know the exact details in regard to FEC, but, in time of real need, railroads can stop quarreling over dimes and be very cooperative.  Surely, FEC did something to get their locomotive fleet to a location safe from the surge.  They will have to rebuild a lot of track and they will need serviceable locomotives to do it.  They might leave their least favorite locomotive in Florida for last-minute things, but the valuable motive power is gone to Georgia or somewhere, obviously on CSX, you can bet on it.

At least they are close to a source of ballast, unlike the situation on the Churchill line in Canada.

Disclaimer: I don't live near any railroad tracks, but I do live in Jacksonville.

A quite a few occasions I have seen Norfolk Southern locomotives and FEC locomotive joined on FEC tracks (and maybe some were NS only, I'm not sure), but I have yet to see CSX locomotives on FEC tracks.

Kelly Anderson posted:

Don't know if they would have to evacuate the state so much as move equipment to the high point locally or on the system.  By Florida standards, just moving stuff from 3' elevation to 10' elevation would make a big difference.  Though with all of the wind driven rain, I would guess that there would be a lot of shorts to deal with.

You're right, Kelly.  After I posted the message, I checked and found that the highest point in Florida is over 300 feet.  Hardly heart-stopping, but there was probably a place, away from the coast, where they could store the locos, perhaps on FEC and otherwise on CSX, since FEC runs exactly where it name says it runs.

The real problem with water would be standing water, of course.  I did not check my timetable special instructions on this, but normally locomotives may not be moved through standing water of more than 3 inches, to protect the traction motors.  With today's rubber-sealed overlapping doors to the cab and outside access to the high voltage compartment, water virtually never gets in when locomotives pass through high pressure wash equipment, so, at least most of them, might very well be ready for service after the storm has passed.  Since they all have auto-start these days, the engine would periodically start and blow water out of the stack before a dangerous amount might accumulate in the turbocharger and the exhaust manifold.  And, if they had enough time, they could have wired or otherwise secured sturdy fabric or plastic over the exhaust stacks and turned off the auto-start feature (and opened the battery switch).  

This is not their first hurricane by far, and I have always lived in the relatively dry southwest, so I do not know the nuts and bolts of their process, but, like you, I am a railroader to the core.  We would have to believe that they have a hurricane plan and -- once it is activated -- everybody has a job to do in preparing the railroad to withstand the storm.  We have winter storm plans in other parts of our railroad network, with storm plans in place, so we can only trust the experts who live in Florida to know how to prepare in the face of an oncoming hurricane.  I hope their damages did not exceed their ability to recover quickly.