It's a Brand New Car!

[kevin_standlee]

I was feeling a little bit better today. At least I could walk farther than from my bed to my desk without keeling over, and I wasn't coughing the way I have been most of the week. So I decided I could go get breakfast at the Wigwam without infecting everyone. I enjoyed the breakfast, and was fortunate enough to win it back on a free-play coupon. (It's about a 50% chance of winning.)

Later in the day, Lisa (who continues to improve faster than I do) and I went to get groceries from Raley's. But before we did, Lisa spotted something bright and shiny in our small rail yard across the street, and it was something to refute those people who continue to predict the end of the boxcar in rail traffic.



This is a nearly brand-new boxcar. You have to know where to look, but it does say BLT-02-19 under the decal from its manufacturer, Gunderson Railcar of Portland, Oregon. The couplers still had their manufacturer's stickers on them. You might say it still had that "new car smell" about it.

Shortly after we got home from Raley's and got the groceries put away, Amtrak #5 (eastbound) came through slowly on the siding, only a few minutes late. I wasn't sure why they had been put in the siding until a few minutes later I saw Amtrak #6 (westbound), running about nine hours late, coming the other way on the main. The delays from back east due to the flooding continue to plague the California Zephyr. This was the closest I've seen to the two trains meeting right in front of the house, and the difference was less than the two-mile length of Fernley siding.

Comments

[garyomaha]

The Amtrak problems due to flooding appear to be largely near here. I don't think the train has come to the Omaha depot in days -- the current routing jumps from stops at Lincoln, NE (about an hour west of Omaha) to Creston, IA (about 2 hours east). For some reason, the folks who usually post way-too-detailed-for-me reasons for such things have been silent online recently...or perhaps the flooding affected them, too. The Omaha depot itself is fine...it's the tracks getting there that are not.

[delosharriman]

I'm not sure what Trinity Industries is building right now. A handful of years back their order book was reputed to be completely full of tank car orders for transporting petroleum-related substances. I'm not at all sure that people who oppose pipelines realize that they're not stopping the stuff from being extracted, just shifting how it gets transported… and to a medium where much more can go wrong, considering pipelines are rarely routed through the centres of major cities!

[scott_sanford]

Pipelines seem both efficient and safe on metrics of cost or accidents per tonne/kilometer. I don't have numbers comparing pipelines to tank cars at hand but it wouldn't surprise me if someone here did.