UP trestle fire at Sacramento

UP's double track ballast deck timber trestle approach to the bridge over the American River is burning for almost its entire length. No take on repair time, or if passenger service will be re-routed over the Feather River route. or replaced by bus service from Sacramento to Reno.

Reply to
Steve Caple
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Fairly spectacular fire; must be 1000 feet or more of trestle, leading north from a bridge over the American River just west of Business I-80. The north end seems to be pretty well out; the south end near the metal truss bridge over the river is burning pretty well, with sections of the ballasted deck collapsing into the flames leaving warped rail above.

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has some video

Reply to
Steve Caple

Uncle Pete, or Uncle Pervo and deferred maintenance? No idea yet; it started about 5:45, early tape showed it fairly localized, just a tall column of very black smoke shot with orange. Later as the length of the restle caught, there were sheets of thick velvety black soot-smoke, until the creosoted layer burned off.

The area north of the river is flood plain that's part of the American River Parkway, with a bicycle path that goes all the way from Discovery Park (where the American joins the Sacramento) up to Folsom. The area there closer to downtown has been known to have a lot of people living rough, so could be a cookfire (it was 81 today, so not for warmth at a quarter to six in the aftgernoon), could be arson, could be railroad operation artifact. Didn't Uncle Pervo lose a trestle to wheel fire with a coal train on it out in the Wyoming to Nebraska vicinity?

Bus schedules for Amtrak commuters have already been announced. Uncle Pervo says that freight service will also be impacted for some time. Should we look for giant mountains of containers piling up in ports? (Ooops, sorry Uncle Perv, didn't mean to mention piles, I know you're sensitive about that.)

Reply to
Steve Caple

Eric, Please do not post binaries (a.k.a. pictures) to rec.models.railroad. This is a text-only group. Posting binaries to a text-only group can cause it to be dropped by ISP's, and can cause foriegn readers of r.m.r to lose money as some pay by the minute for access. 38K isn't much, but still that's about 20-30 normal posts here in size. If you want to post the picture online, please post it to a binary group like alt.binaries.pictures.rail and post a note here telling folks to look at it. Or simply post the link to the web site it came from. Thank you.

Paul A. Cutler III Deputy Sheriff, r.m.r

************* Weather Or No Go New Haven *************
Reply to
Pac Man

In the olden days (GRIN) when the railroads still had lots of track, before tearing it up, trains were simply rerouted. The timetable was out of whack for a while but the traffic wasn't delayed for long. In these times, with all the additional track gone, it just shuts down the railroad.

Reply to
Jon Miller

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