Amtrak Woes

Amtrak canceled trains 5/6 (the California Zephyr) west of Salt Lake City due to the severe weather conditions out here. I can see that it would have been pretty difficult for them to get through. Interstate 80 has been closed most of today, and I've not seen many trains of any sort here. Thursday was the last westbound Amtrak coming this way before the cancellations. The westbound train was running more than nine hours late, and we were following its progress on Amtrak's Track Your Train map. The train came to a halt at Darwin siding (east of Fernley), but we did not hear anything on the radio scanner to explain why. Venturing out into the howling windstorm, we could see lots of red blinking lights down the tracks. After maybe an hour, the wind had subsided a bit and Amtrak finally came through, but the blinking lights were still there, so we got in the Astro and drove down to Main Street Park (former home of the Bottlecap Gazebo). We could see lots of fire engines and a bucket truck on the opposite side of the tracks, but no obvious fire. Lisa then noticed that none of the houses in that are were showing any lights. It was too dark to take any photos, but the next morning when I ran out to get some milk, I saw what appears to explain the emergency vehicles, the lack of lights on the houses, and the extra hour of delay that afflicted Amtrak.

( The Next Day )

Although the Rolling Stone is ready to be collected, we told Big O not to expect us until Monday. There's no sense trying to drive that RV in a wind storm.

Edit, March 3: There had been a bucket truck out there the night before when I couldn't take pictures, but I've had it pointed out to me that there was no bucket on the truck in this picture and it was actually a pole truck designed to hold a pole in position like this pending a proper fix.