Fire at Weed, CA

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Grandpa D

Grandpa D

Lead Service Attendant
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Reports say there's a 300 acre fire at Weed, about 20 miles north of Dunsmuir, CA. 100 structures burned and I-5 closed. I'm not familiar with the Amtrak route through there, but it appears the 14 and 11 would be affected.
 
Currently there's a huge fire in El Dorado County that is sending smoke to Reno. That's right along US 50 in El Dorado National Forest, I believe.

Hopefully the Weed fire doesn't send more smoke to Reno.
 
The likelihood of the Coast Starlight being affected by the Boles Fire in Weed is very high. Union Pacific currently has the railroad fully shut down as the fire started along the tracks (but was not started by a train, instead local Law Enforcement have a suspect in custody for reportedly starting the fire negligently.) I-5 is open again and traffic is unimpeded, though off-ramps into Weed are closed to all but local residents and emergency equipment. California Highway 97, which the UPRR parallels, is closed to all traffic. It is unknown if there is damage to the railroad infrastructure, but it is possible. The town's #1 employer, Roseburg Forest Products, lost their whole mill in the fire. That mill, interestingly enough, used to be the largest sawmill in the world. You can bet that plywood prices will go up (as the Weed mill makes a sizable chunk of the country's plywood.)
 
According to Status Maps, 11 finally got through this morning after a six-hour delay. 14 is listed as departing DUN

nearly 5 hours late but has not yet reported at Klamath Falls, so it's not clear whether it's made it through the area.

(I have not been able to get the Track-A-Train widget to work on amtrak.com today)

The third photo in this news slideshow shows fire burning right next to train tracks, though it's not clear whether those

are the tracks that Amtrak uses.
 
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From another railroad board Train 14 was apparently involved in a collision that caused it to block the mainline (for both trains 11 & 14). Upon release, Train 11 then got stuck behind a freight train involved in a collision (possibly a freight train striking a bear and losing several air hoses)?

I'm not exactly sure but it appears the delays were not fire related, just a series of unfortunate events.
 
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Yes, 11 was held behind a UP freight when said freight struck a bear, severing air hoses on the engine and severing bits of the bear, too. Poor 11 is now running more than 7 hours late; at SJC the passengers who showed up/weren't proactively contacted by Amtrak were accommodated on the bus-to-SLO/Surfliner combo that will get them into SoCal more or less on time.

Highlarious as it may be to some, the city of Weed was named for a lumberman in the 19th century; the main industry of the town is a large sawmill, which has burned to the ground.
 
SF radio was saying this morning that the mill was destroyed, and quoting locals about how that was the chief employer in town, but now the Chron reports "The mill, which with 170 workers is one of the biggest employers in the town of 3,000 people, was undamaged except for a few outbuildings." So yay for that! 11's still 7+ hours down, due into SJC around 5:00 p.m. I think we had one die-hard who was going to stick around for it, despite the ETA into Los Angeles of...0-dark-15ish.
 
I was on 6(17) and we were not affected. While Highway 50 is closed towards South Lake Tahoe, the tracks the Zephyr runs on parallel Interstate 80. I will say though that the air was very smoky. I got off in Truckee and it smelled heavily of smoke and ash was floating around in the air. On the train it looked very ominous. It was interesting at the same time, but unfortunate that it was due to the fire. The world looked like you were looking at it through a Sepia tone camera lens. Day turned into night as the smoke took over the sky. Again, it looked amazing as it looked as you were viewing the world through a filter but unfortunate again because of the cause of that.

They did arrest a suspect yesterday though who was suspected of causing the fire.
 
It is a fair distance away, however from the train it feels like you are in the middle of a fire zone. You can't see flames or anything but the smoke obstructs a lot of the view that would normally be present and you can smell the smoke inside the train and it is everywhere in the air outside. Even the narration from the Docents from the California State Railway Museum commented about the smoke and fire.

I doubt it will spread towards Donner Summit, however with the wind continuing to pick up and the unpredictability of fires, who knows. Hopefully it will be well contained soon!
 
I want to catch the starlight from Sacramento to Eugene on Monday. I am wondering on the safety of this. Does anyone know. So sad for all the people and the wilderness affected by all the fires..
 
Stacy Miller said:
I want to catch the starlight from Sacramento to Eugene on Monday. I am wondering on the safety of this. Does anyone know. So sad for all the people and the wilderness affected by all the fires..
Click to expand...
If there's danger to the trains/tracks, they won't run until it's clear.
 
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