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Northwestern Pacific
MAJOR BRIDGE WORK IS UNDER WAY: In early October, contractors replaced the Cinnabar wood pile trestle near Petaluma on California’s Northwestern Pacific Railroad under the auspices of track owner Sonoma- Marin Area Rapid Transit. Workers started to demolish the old structure on October 3 and the new, concrete ballasted deck on steel pile span was finished and open to traffic on Octo- ber 12. The contractor worked continuously throughout the ten-day work window to finish the job on time. The new bridge is rated for standard 286,000 lb gross weight freight cars. Yet to be replaced are the Healdsburg
bridge and the 1903-built Haystack Landing swing bridge in Petaluma, which will be re- placed by a former BNSF Railway bascule bridge which was built in 1989 on the Galve- ston Bay causeway in Texas. The “new” bridge was replaced in 2012 by a larger vertical lift span and has been moved in pieces to the for- mer Napa Pipe plant in Napa , where it will be reassembled on a barge and floated up the Petaluma River to be installed. See RAILNEWS in the May 2012 issue for more information on the Haystack and Galveston bridges.
Pacific Locomotive Association
RARE K-M PARTS ARE DISCOVERED: The Pacific Locomotive Association and its determined group of Krauss-Maffei diesel-hy- draulic fans across the globe have located two complete trucks in excellent condition which will allow Southern Pacific ML4000 C’C’ No. 9010 to move under its own power once more. After SP scrapped the K-Ms in 1969, five pairs of their trucks were sold to maintenance equipment manufacturer Plasser & Theurer in Austria, which used them in five self-pro- pelled ballast cleaners built between 1970 and 1975. One of those machines has recently been scrapped in France, and PLA has arranged to acquire its two trucks. The group has also located a Maybach prime mover to replace the damaged No. 1 engine, which was deactivated but left in place as ballast when SP converted No. 9010 to a camera car. (PLA discovered that the No. 2 engine is still serv- iceable.) For more information or to make a donation, visit
sp9010.ncry.org.
Yreka Western
WILL NEW MILL BRING NEW BUSINESS? The moribund Yreka Western Railroad in northern California may receive an infusion of new traffic if a proposed lumber mill is built in town. Fruit Growers Supply is planning to open a mill which will employ 30-40 people on the 65-acre Hi-Ridge property. FGS owns 160,000 acres of timberland in Siskiyou Coun- ty, much of which is currently unusable due to the small size of the logs. The new plant would be designed to handle the small logs and ship milled lumber to Visalia, Calif., where it would be made into fruit packing boxes for Sunkist. Whether that traffic would move by truck or by rail is not yet known, but it could move over YWRR and out the southern end of the Central Oregon & Pacific to Weed, Calif., and then over Union Pacific to Visalia.
Power Failure Cripples Metro-North, Amtrak Service
THE FAILURE OF A CONSOLIDATED EDISON TRANSFORMER feeding the catenary on Metro-North’s New Haven Line between Pelham, N.Y., and Stamford, Conn., essentially shut down the railroad for nearly two weeks starting on September 25, 2013. With overhead power out, MNR and Amtrak relied on diesel power to get trains through the gap until electrici- ty was partially restored on September 29, when temporary substations were brought on line which allowed limited electric m.u. service throught the affected area. Amtrak cancelled its Acela Express between New York and Boston until September 30 and used diesel power to pull Regional trains through the gap until full power and full service was restored on October 7. An estimated 62,500 Metro-North passengers were affected. On September 27 (above), a west- bound Metro-North train pulled into Stamford with a P32DM on the head end as an Amtrak Re- gional for Boston had an ex-Metroliner cab car leading a P42DC pulling the train’s dead AEM7.
IC-Era Highliner M.U.s Are Reaching the End of the Line
METRA’S FORMER ILLINOIS CENTRAL “HIGHLINERS” are running their final miles on the Electric District south of Chicago to University Park, Ill. The 40-year-old m.u.s are being re- placed by 160 new bilevels which began to enter service in November 2012. The 130 Highliners were built by the St. Louis Car Co. and purchased for the Illinois Central in the 1970s. (Metra purchased the route in 1987.) The Highliners are made of carbon steel, which is prone to rust, and Metra says they can no longer be economically refurbished. The new cars, being built by Nip- pon Sharyo and Sumitomo Corp. of America under a $585 million bond, are built of stainless steel. They have larger windows, brighter lighting, reversible seatbacks and power outlets, and half the cars are being built with bathrooms. As the new cars come on line at the rate of four to six per month, the Highliners are removed from service and will be scrapped. To date, about half of the bilevels have been delivered, with the order scheduled for completion in 2015.
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MICHAEL T. BURKHART
DAVID SILVER
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