Western Railroad Discussion > Badger problems and a visitor

Today around 0815hrs, PHL's Badger Bridge, which dispatches the south end of the Alameda Corridor, lost power/control of all of it's CTC switches and signals resulting in many delays and slow movement of trains in a out of the Ports of LA and Long Beach. It took over 3 hours to get a single unit from LAXT [on Terminal Island] to 9th Street in the port of Long Beach, a distance of less than 4 miles, a little of which was due to shortsightedness on the part of the PHL dispatcher, who probably bought a bunch of throat lozanges on the way home with all of the "permission to pass this signal and that signal and put this switch in hand throw and return this switch to power when through it" it addition to the normal track authorities that get issued all day! Around 1700 hrs control was slowly returning to various control points. The signals never went dark, just reds everywhere. Also, an unusual visitor in the form of the exUP LNG unit, now BNSF 1202 in fresh BNSF H-1 paint, which came down from it's normal LAJ duties to take part in some kind of happening on Terminal Island tomorrow.
JB

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In another view, the unit has an unusually small BNSF herald on it's nose.
JB

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A question about the "visitor". Are those units "normal" units or are they
Remote Controlled only. They look pretty sharp.

Top Cat

Is that in the APL facility JB ?( or GLOBAL GATEWAY ) Its been 2 years since i was down there.

It is not an RCO unit, and, it is on the lead to the now inactive LAXT [export coal] facility adjacent to APL's support yard, visible in the distance.
JB

JB will the LAXT ever be used for Coke or coal again?

All I can say is if they do, BNSF will be up the creek without a mickey mouse engine facility! I have no idea.
JB

The BNSF 1202 came to the Terminal Island to be a prop for a media event at the NYK Terminal (TICTF) on Monday morning. It was joined by Green Goat RPRX 2401. The event had to do with the introduction of LNG powered hostling tractors at NYK and the locmotives were just part of the green theme.

The CTC outage was caused by a faulty communications card at Badger Bridge. BNSF, which is responsible for communications on the entire Corridor/PHL CTC system, found a replacement and patched things up that afternoon.