Future flooding for Empire Builder?

[ez223]

Today's trains through Fargo made it.

Train 7/27 27(Mar) departed Fargo 47m late.

Train 8/28 26(Mar) departed at 441am, 2hr 28m late. Arrived into MSP at 930am, 2hr 24m late.

As of right now, even though the news has got worse, Train 7/27 is expected to depart on-time.

Someone asked what does "dogcatch" mean, it's when the train crew's FRA allowable work time has expired, it's 12 hours maximum, and a new crew it sent out to meet the train, intending to dogcatch the train before the crew dies. Usually, the dogcatch crew is the next crew that would be taking over at a crew change point. Sometimes an extra board conductor and engineer will be called or sometimes even they may be called to work OT on a day off.

 

[PRR 60]

The NWS has revised the river forecast and it appears the flooding in Fargo has peaked. The river forecast states that the Red River of the North crested at midnight (3/27-28) at 40.82 feet and is now slowly receding. The river is predicted to drop below 40 feet Tuesday evening. That is a tremendous improvement over the earlier forecast of a 43 to 44 foot flood, and is great news for the people in the Fargo - Moorhead area. With the river at 40 feet plus there is still a danger, but a flood at 44 feet could have been a disaster.

As for the Empire builder, things look good for now.

 

[EB_OBS]

It appears officials believe that the Red river has crested at 40.82 feet. The article said that it may take a week to drop by two feet. At 40.82 feet that leaves the bridge that Amtrak is using to cross the river in satisfactory condition.

MSNBC

EZ

 

[jmbgeg]

Over an hour of that late arrival time was because someone was put off in an ambulance about 10 miles outside of Minot last night. Then the resulting slow orders through Fargo attributed to the rest.
The conductors out of St. Cloud did have to dogcatch the builder today too.

The medical emergency was kind of weird. First, they paged the conductor to the dining car, followed by paging any medical practioners on board. It was later than the dining car would typically be operating. Next, it took a long time for the ambulance to arrive. If it was a heart attack, the delay in the ambulance arriving was beyond the normal survival window.