Mike's Railroad Crossing Forum

A derailment and fire in the tunnel of the Tehachapi Loop has closed the entire grade. The picture is from the Newpaper as well.

http://www.bakersfield.com/news/local/x ... o-injuries

I read about that. They had to evacuate some homes because of the toxic smoke.

Burning plastic pellets make quite stinky smoke.

Considering the entire grade just had it's track aligned and ballast tamped - along with fixing whatever other defects may have been found - I'd say somebody in the UP Track Maintenance department is about to get reamed. How hard depends on if that tunnel needs to be relined due to the fire.

I heard here on the news that the evacuation spread was 1 mile from the fire scene.

Now that line is impassible for a while, I wonder what detours the trains are taking now?

Smjh1979 wrote: Now that line is impassible for a while, I wonder what detours the trains are taking now?

They'll be using the UP Coast line. Cuesta grade is going to be a real choke point as there are few staging tracks at the bottom & top of the grade. I don't even know if there's a passing track on the grade itself.

That was fast work I guess. The grade has been open since Tuesday afternoon, but there appears to be a lot of work going on in the tunnel area. On my way home at midnight, I can see the tunnel portal area on the inside portion of the loop is lit up like daytime, but I can't see what they're actually doing. The amount of lighting they have is very impressive though.

Whoops. My bad. Seems the line wasn't open, the BNSF & UP were just clearing the line of the 60 trains stuck by the fire.
Work continued today, with the burned & totalled cars removed, and tunnel work & new track going in. The tunnel shot was taken from an area rarely open to the public, and I'm not sure it was open today, but a UP worker said "go over there" when I asked if I could get closer for a look.

Certainly stuff you don't see everyday...

Excellent photos you took.

Sad to see something like that happen though.

[quote="SirKrunch"]Excellent photos you took.
[quote]

Thank You. I'm getting a grip on this camera...