FURY NATURE’S

By David C. Lester, Editor-in-Chief

Amajor challenge for the railroad industry is that it operates outside. Railroads build, own, and maintain their infrastructure, and when bad weather hits, it’s up to them to plan for and deal with it using their personnel and money. Railroads that regularly face a particular type of weather, such as heavy snow, may own equipment to deal with the a ermath, or they will lease the equipment necessary to do the job.

RT&S recently spoke with Dwayne Gibson, AVP – Maintenance of Way & Structures at Norfolk Southern, about how the Class I road handles extreme weather events. From an overall engineering project perspective, Gibson said that “Norfolk Southern’s focus is on planning, preparation, and execution (PPE) [not to be confused with personal protection equipment] – this has been the key to engineering success on our railroad. We do this to get the job done e ectively, on time, and on budget and to ensure we don’t have any incidents or injuries.” Gibson also said, “Every weather event deserves a custom response. Whether it’s fast-moving or slow-moving, if high winds are involved, and what threat the storm poses to trees, are just a few of the things we consider. We also must ensure our response covers the particular hazards workers will face when they arrive on site.” For example, Gibson points out that if a heavy cold front moves into the southeast, bringing heavy rain, it’s essential to know how fast it’s moving. If the storm parks over a particular territory for several days, he and his team know they’ll be dealing with ooding, potential washouts, and drainage problems. Storms parked over mountainous areas of the system are particularly challenging. If a storm is moving fast, it’s likely accompanied by high winds that will bring down trees, potentially blocking the right-of-way, so the plan and equipment for the latter event di ers from one needed for the former.

Gibson adds that “Location is huge on our system. We must protect 22 states across the NS system, and location will also dictate our strategy. Sometimes we have a hurricane that pushes through the southeast. When dealing with one of these, we may curtail tra c along the coast, pull our people back away out of the eye of the storm until it passes, and then we start coming in to make the inspections and restoring service.” Making inspections is one of the most important parts of the process. A er a hurricane, we must inspect inland parts of the line along with the coastal. e ultimate goal is to protect the operation and, from an engineering perspective, nd the trouble before the trains nd the trout.

When bad weather strikes, railroaders must prepare and plan for, endure, then address the a ermath of a storm. Preparation, planning, and clean-up are done before and a er the storm, but what is done during the storm? For the most part, the storm must be endured. When it comes to storms with high winds, tornadoes, and hurricanes, crews can only hunker down and wait for the fury to pass.

However, rain events o er opportunities to begin work during the storm, provided the crews can stay ahead of the water ow. For example, if water is not draining from the ballast and roadbed fast enough, crews can, in some cases, create additional channels through which the water can ow to help it run o more quickly rather than sink into the sub-ballast. Yet, before work can start in these situations, railroads have crews out on the track monitoring conditions. It may be that if conditions are reasonable, trains can continue to run if their path ahead is inspected thoroughly. If the railroad must stop running trains, crews will continue to monitor potential ooding and take whatever corrective action they can before the storm is over. Dealing with snowstorms has its unique challenges. Roads ensure their switches and other special trackwork do not freeze and become immobile. Switch heaters take care of much of this. If the switches are working, the next step is to remove as much snow from the tracks as possible, usually with various sizes of blowers. If it’s a light accumulation, teams may use brooms to sweep away the snow. Other tools that help ght snow and ice include propane torches when ice accumulation is heavy, and special chemicals for brushing on track and switches to prevent them from freezing. Snow plows attached to the locomotive pilot are also helpful. e road does everything it can to keep trains moving during snow and ice events because if snow and ice accumulate and crust over each other, it’s much more di cult to clear the line.

Gibson pointed out that NS partners with Accuweather to obtain storm alerts and monitor rail territory conditions. “For example, the Accuweather system alerts us if total snowfall in an area is six inches or greater or has occurred in 12 hours or less, and we also have another warning that prompts our people if we have rainfall totals greater than eight inches within 24 hours, or if either of these events is forecasted to occur in the next 24 hours.

When crews deploy to address a weather event, the railroad tries to keep a given group within a radius of 30 to 50 miles. Local hotels are o en available with food and lodging, but if one is not nearby, the railroad will use trailers with beds and a bathroom and contract with a local foodservice provider to provide meals to the crew.

Rock and mudslides can happen due to things other than weather, but where there is the potential for these along NS lines, slide fences are erected to alert the railroad if a slide occurs. Gibson points out that weather can, indeed, cause slides. Extremely heavy rain can cause mud to ow down a hill, hit the slide fence, and spill onto the tracks. Rocks can fall in the spring when frozen water starts to thaw out, causing rocks to pop o the side of a hill and down to the fence.

While railroad operations pose various challenges, some variables can be controlled to minimize difficulty. Weather issues, obviously, cannot be controlled. The only recourse a railroad has is to plan, prepare, and execute (PPE, as Gibson said) when bad weather hits. While recovery from most storms can be managed in days or weeks, Norfolk Southern faced a considerable challenge when Hurricane Katrina hit in 2005. Katrina hit in late August, wiping out much of the railroad along the Gulf Coast, but NS fully restored service to New Orleans in early October. Indeed, the railroad restored the Lake Pontchartrain trestle in just sixteen days by setting up a bank of cranes to lift the track blown off the trestle during the storm. In addition, crews cleared approximately 5,000 trees from the right-of-way, beginning in Birmingham and working south toward New Orleans. Gibson was part of the crew that dealt with the aftermath of this vast, damaging storm. He said, “That was a heck of a storm, no doubt about it. That was very abnormal, and you hope you don’t have very many of them in your career, that’s for sure.”