RailRoadFan.com

How badly was the Chicago Line affected by the tornado? Is there any damage to railroad infrastructure in the area?

I saw no damage to the Chicago Line..There was a 15Mph slow order at CP 281..There was also many false activations as the power was out so all gates were stuck down....Aside from all the flying debris that was cleared from the tracks,no damage that i saw

There was no track damage or equipment damage except for the top aspects at CP 285 for the siding and main 1. Both had been hit by rocks (even though the tornado was 4 miles east and 4 miles south. There was a total of 3.8 miles of 15 mph running when trains first started running until maintainers could fix the wires that had been knocked down and also the signals at 285, 282, 281 and 278 were all having issues with trains having to be talked by. The CSX had more the 20 racks derailed but only 9 were knocked over as the rest were slightly moved off the rail and were in the departure yard. A CSX C40-8W ended up with pilot damage at Stanley as the winds blew some heavy metal that was thrown around. Traffic on the NS by Vickers was stopped from 1130 pm on Sat night until about 0800 or so when things slowly were brought through. The CSX had a Q397-05 tied down at LeMoyne which the lead unit was cut off and taken back to Willard with the crew to escape the storm. CSX rerouted Q151-06 across Ohio and up the Toledo Branch and Q272-05 was rerouted via the Toledo Sub and highballed the Walbridge work. Operations on the CSX were shut down until about 1730 when the tracks were reopened between Turnpike and Crandle. NS operations were a mess as almost every train was over 6 hours late in and out of Toledo and also many recrews were sent out of town to get on dead trains.

By Monday things were mostly back to normal - Amtrak through on time & early, typical NS van trains at the typical times, etc. The only thing noteworthy being that there's still a slow order down by 281 keeping things moving slowly (as of lunch Tuesday) there but otherwise pretty normal.

Michael

That's good to hear, especially since it looks like the town was nearly wiped out. I guess the tornado was stronger than originally thought - EF-4 with approximately 175 MPH winds.

This morning they appeared to be blasting through on the NS at normal speed, at least that is from what I could tell by the few I seen around 10:00 AM

sd70accsxt700 wrote:This morning they appeared to be blasting through on the NS at normal speed, at least that is from what I could tell by the few I seen around 10:00 AM

He he, I guess Mother Nature couldn't stop the thoroughbred.

Nope but it deffinatly stopped the chicken. Thankfully no one was hurt, as 795 is very close to the south end of the yard were yard jobs would be working.

With the racks tipped over in Yard D and the twister going over SR795, was Hulcher damaged at all? They are right across from Lake High school, and well its GONE!!

Hulcher moved over to E. Broadway, a few years ago, next to AK Steel, acrooss from the driveway that lead back to Stanley tower. I am working on editing photos, for my report in the Chit Chat section, but the old airport hanger that Hulchers used yes is gone.

RJ Corman is across 795 from the Lake HS grounds. Not sure if they sustained damage or not.

Goes to show how long its been since I have been back to the area I guess.

RJ Corman is across 795 from the Lake HS grounds. Not sure if they sustained damage or not.

No no damage as I reported in the off subject tornado topic.