(August 21, 2023) – RailState, the rail industry’s only provider of real-time rail network visibility, independently tracks all freight rail movements across Canada and has recently added coverage in Southern California. As extreme weather events hit areas across North America, RailState is in a unique position to provide detailed data on the impact of these events on rail traffic.
“The weather this year is something most of us would like to forget, but these are the trends that we all have to react to, including the railroads,” said John Schmitter, co-founder and Chief Commercial Officer at RailState. “Some of these recent examples show how resilient rail can be. Tracks can be repaired quickly and service can be back to normal in days, while fixes to roadways may cause congestion for months or longer.”
Southern California Flooding
The first tropical storm to hit southern California in 80 years made landfall over the weekend bringing torrential rainfall and causing widespread flooding throughout the Coachella Valley and Palm Springs area. Water and mud have closed roads throughout the area and taken the main Union Pacific route temporarily offline.
RailState recently expanded its network coverage to this area and can provide additional detail on the impact on rail volumes moving through the region.
The last loaded train to go through the Loma Linda area, just west of the worst-hit areas, was an eastbound manifest train carrying 109 cars of mixed types that passed through the region at 8:39 PM PDT on Sunday, August 20. Rains increased into the evening and early morning, and normal rail flows stopped.
At 2:58 AM PDT on Monday, August 21, a maintenance of way (MOW) train with 33 cars of ballast headed eastbound for track repairs. The unedited image below was taken by a RailState sensor installed near Loma Linda. It shows MOW equipment on the eastbound MOW train.