Passenger Trains > Trees delay Empire and Virginia trains

During the evening of July 3, trees on the track between Poughkeepsie and Rhinecliff, New York shut down Amtrak’s Hudson Line for about 4 hours. Ethan Allen 291, Lake Shore Limited 49, Maple Leaf/Adirondack 64 and Empire Service trains 1237. 239, 241 and 244 all incurred significant delays.During the morning of the 4th, trees blocking CSX’s North End Sub. between Richmond and Petersburg held up Norfolk-Boston Regionals 82 and 88 each for over 3 hours.

Andy

It is evidently cheaper for the railroads to clean up trees on the track with delay to services, than it is to maintain the right of way.  Sometimes trees on the track are unavoidable.  Often however, it is preventable with good trimming and maintenance practices.  Manpower costs money, and money is God in our world.  The cost of everything overrides the value of much.

As a freight engineer I just hit them....we don't have much choice actually...coming around a curve and, there it is....most of the time you either shatter them...or push them aside...often pieces get hung up underneath and you drag them along for a while. 

Amtrak is responsible for the right of way north of Poughkeepsie, so they haven't CSX to blame for brush clearance anymore, only Mama Nature, Act of God, etc.  

regalstream1516 Wrote:
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> It is evidently cheaper for the railroads to clean
> up trees on the track with delay to services, than
> it is to maintain the right of way.  Sometimes
> trees on the track are unavoidable.  Often
> however, it is preventable with good trimming and
> maintenance practices.  Manpower costs money, and
> money is God in our world.  The cost of
> everything overrides the value of much.

All the railroads have left their right of waves go to hell as far as tree and brush removal is concerned. It used to be they had to keep the trees down because of the code lines along the way. Now that that does been eliminated, they can just let it all turn into a jungle. And then when the wind blows down come the trees. I have pictures taken around the Indianapolis area 50 years ago and those lines had already been there for 75+ years and there was very little growth around them. Now they are all a jungle.

Posted from iPhone

seventy five years ago the right of way was often paved with cinders and coal dust from steam engines. Nothing would grown there, and near there. Now, the area is often grown over.

You guys assume the trees are growing on the railroad right of way. How wide is that right of way? 

Lackawanna484 Wrote:
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> seventy five years ago the right of way was often
> paved with cinders and coal dust from steam
> engines. Nothing would grown there, and near
> there. Now, the area is often grown over.

That is an important fact that is often ignored by the "railroads have let their ROW have gone to crap".