Prototype Railroading: Rain, Rain, Go Away

Lately, eastern Montana has had a lot of rain, and that has lead to a few unusual problems around the railroad.  The railroad yard is usually somewhat wet and muddy, and there have been standing puddles for quite some time.  However, the rain that we have gotten in the last week or so has changed the situation quite a bit.  At times it has been raining several inches each day, with few to no breaks.  Besides the yard being wet and muddy, everyone who works in it has been wet and muddy.  The Yellowstone River, which flows through town has risen significantly, and has begun to occupy parts of the flood plain in town.  Culverts, creeks, and streams are all full.  Last weekend, while I was working in the yard, some of the consequences of all this rain began to make themselves apparent.

On the east side of town there are some hills.  Between them and the river is the railroad, and most of Glendive.  Many years ago, as the railroad was built and the town was developed, some very long culverts were built to carry runoff water from the hills, under the town and the railroad, to the river.  Those culverts are  quite large, some of them being eight feet in diameter and over a mile long.  Some of the older guys have told me about when they were kids, how they and their friends would dare each other to run through the culverts, across town.  To a kid, that was pretty scary, because it gets so dark in the middle of them.  All of those culverts run under the railroad yard and most of the developed parts of town before they get to the river.  Most of the time, there is no evidence that they are there, unless you happen to know where the ends are.

Last week, while working on an evening Utility shift, in the Glendive Yard, I discovered some evidence of the rain.  At the west end of the yard, there is a bridge over a creek.  The main track and the yard lead  cross the creek at the same place, although technically they are on two different bridges.  Normally, from the tracks, you cannot tell that because there is gravel on the bridge decks, and it is easy to walk from one to the other without ever noticing.  All the rain however had started to wash the gravel down between the bridges in a relatively small gap.  The Conductor I was working with took a step off the locomotive and actually stumbled into one of the holes that was left behind.  There was still gravel, and he did not fall through the bridge, but once he found that, we looked at it for a minute and discovered that we could see the side of the bridge the main track is on.  That was not good, so we called the dispatcher to put out a notice.

The next day, and several inches of rain later, we discovered a much bigger problem.  Once again, I was working on the evening Utility shift, with the same Conductor.  We were putting locomotives on a coal train.  The Conductor and I were standing on the rear platform of the rear locomotive, protecting as we moved the locomotives backwards to the rear end of the train.  As we neared the switch at the east end of three track, we noticed we could see the sides of the ties between the rails on three track.  Usually the gravel and ballast is piled up to the top of the ties, so this was unusual.  As we got closer, we saw more of the sides, indicating that some gravel was missing.  We gave the engineer the signal to stop the engines before we got to the missing ballast, and we stepped off to investigate.  We were not expecting what we found.

As we got off the engines and walked closer to the missing ballast, we realized that the rails and ties also did not have any ballast under them.  They were floating over a sink hole that had mysteriously opened up under the tracks.  The hole, at the top was about eight feet around.  As it got deeper, it also got wider.  At the bottom of the hole, at least six feet below the ground, the hole was at least ten feet around.  The rails and ties were simply floating in the air over this hole.  As we looked in the hole, we could see more gravel and dirt falling over the sides and into the hole.  Once again, we called the dispatcher and explained the situation to him and told him that the entire east yard lead and all track above and including three track had to be put out of service.  Chances are if we had taken the locomotive over that hole, we would have had a disaster.  The one rail of the lead that went over the hole would have sank and broken under the weight of the engine, one side would have had no support, and the locomotive would have likely gone on its side.

Someone from Maintenance of Way arrived shortly after we called the dispatcher about the sink hole.  They were there to fix another sink hole, which had appeared on a driveway into the yard.  We also explained the situation to him, and showed him the hole.  He was the one who explained that there was a culvert under the yard, and the rest of town, which ran right under the hole he was fixing, and the one we had just discovered.  Once we showed the problem to him, we called the roundhouse, because we could not put the locomotives on their train, and we needed to know where the roundhouse wanted them stored in the meantime.  They ended up going back to the track where we had picked them up.  As we were headed back there, we noticed another, much smaller sink hole developing under the runaround track, right near the fuel storage tanks.  While that was not serious yet, we figured it would be safe to report it before it did get large.  A little more rain would be all it would take to make that hole as large as the one we had just found.  Once the locomotives were put away, we went back to the larger sink hole, and discovered that the gravel under one track and the main track was also beginning to sink and give way under the tracks.  A hole had not developed, but there were several sags in the road bed, and it was obvious that the ground was going somewhere.  From there we went back to the depot and reported all our findings to the dispatcher.  That gave him just two track which he could use.  The only problem with two track is that there was a coal train on it with no locomotives.  That was the train we had been powering up before we found the holes.  So no trains could come into the yard until the holes were fixed.

Less than a minute after we got off the phone with the dispatcher, the Switch Crew radioed us.  They were out at a local industry and had encountered a rain related problem.  They made it to the industry just fine, but once they got there, a small hill near the tracks on that line gave way, and a mudslide occurred, burying the tracks in several feet of mud.  Because of the slide, they were unable to bring the train back to the yard.  They gave us the location and approximate length and depth of the slide, and asked us to send the crew van out to them.  We called the dispatcher back and relayed the message.  A stressful night for him was only getting worse.  What we did not realize is that this was only the beginning.

Several hours later that night, after I was off work and asleep, a much more serious mudslide occurred.  About 85 miles west of Glendive, the railroad runs along the Yellowstone River, and along some small hills.  The railroad occupies a fairly small shelf above the river, right up against the hills.  Because of all the rain, and the overall softness of the ground, one of those hills collapsed.  When that happened, it came down on the main line between Glendive and points west.  The railroad tracks and the shelf it sat on were swept away, into the Yellowstone River.  An entire mile of railroad track and right of way is completely gone.  This completely shut down all rail traffic west of Glendive.  Trains were stopped at the next siding, and vans were dispatched to bring the crews home.  Maintenance of Way was dispatched to the scene of the slide, and train loads of rocks and ballast were called.  The small mudslide on a branch in Glendive suddenly became a low priority.  Within hours, 40 cars of rock had been dumped in the area of the slide, in order to rebuild the right of way and get tracks back in place and in service.  While 40 cars is a lot of rock, hundreds will be needed to get everything back in service and to get the track up to normal operating speed.  While the railroad can have trains moving again in just a couple of days, it takes an army of track maintainers working around the clock to make that happen, and it takes weeks to get the track back to the condition it was before the slide.

The rain has made life interesting in the past week.  It has given everyone a few unexpected days off, although it has caused some serious service disruptions.  As if we have not had enough, the weather forecasters are telling us more rain is still to come.  I suppose this will lead to a very green summer, that is if summer ever gets here!