Lack of Traffic

There has been a distinct lack of train traffic here at Fernley this week. That's because Union Pacific has the line over Donner Summit closed on account of they are re-laying the second track at Yuba Gap torn up in the 1990s in a short-sighted attempt to save money by cannibalizing the railroad. Union Pacific (ex-SP, much of it originally CP) is double-track from Oakland to Sacramento and then on to Reno and Sparks, except for the single-track section at the Summit Tunnel (when they removed the Yuba Gap section, they also removed the original Track 1 that ran around the outside of the mountain) and the now-about-to-be-doubled section at Yuba Gap. UP closed the line for a week to allow for the extensive work needed to restore the second track at Yuba Gap. Most trains have been re-routed.

( Short-turning the California Zephyr )

On Wednesday morning, after Amtrak #6 went through on the main heading for its truncated terminus of Reno, I saw an odd piece of railroad equipment passing through Fernley on the siding and following Amtrak west.

( HARSCO Rail Train )

This new section of second track, undoing the corporate vandalism of the Southern Pacific, should improve capacity over Donner. Alas, it seems unlikely to me that they'll ever restore the difficult-to-maintain Track 1, so the summit tunnel will continue to be a capacity bottleneck for the foreseeable future.