Hurricane Milton

If we're going to have more hurricanes hitting us, we better change the title of this thread to "2024 Hurricane Season Disruptions".

But then, NOAA did say 17-24 named hurricanes this year for the Atlantic alone...
https://www.noaa.gov/news-release/noaa- ... ane-season

Evacuation trains? Think that thru a second....

Eh it was more speculation if that could help, I remember Katrina's bus evacuation system being completely botched. To your point Florida has a higher vehicle ownership rate, which seems to have the knock on effect of fuel shortages from the evacuations and everyone filling up their Jerry cans for the generators. Again, I would think trains could be a huge benefit in these types of situations.

Per Reuters

By 6:30 p.m. ET on Tuesday, 7,912 gasoline stations in Florida, about 17.4% of the total, had run out of fuel versus almost no outages on Monday morning, according to data from fuel markets tracker GasBuddy.

Brightline has suspended operations though

Service to/from ORL suspended 10/9 and 10/10. WPB-MIA service operating as usual. Check email for travel updates.

eolesen wrote: ↑Tue Oct 08, 2024 6:24 pm

SST wrote: ↑Tue Oct 08, 2024 3:28 pm I was just reading this post and noticed your commentary above. If I interpret this correctly, you were working for an airline in 1992 in JFK? If that's correct, curious to know what airline you worked for.

I was with American back then. Between the endless parade of 747's and the Concorde, JFK was the place to be.

There were two things I loved about the Concorde. When it departed, it would set off all the car alarms in the employee parking lot. It always made me laugh. The other was watching it depart during a rainy day as the afterburner would turn the rainwater on the runway to steam. We had no sound insulation where I worked. We all just stopped working until it was out of range.

I had another 7 years to go before getting hooked on RR's when I discovered that where I was working use to be the Gardenville Yard in Buffalo, NY.

ChesterValley wrote: ↑Tue Oct 08, 2024 8:06 pm
Brightline has suspended operations though

Service to/from ORL suspended 10/9 and 10/10. WPB-MIA service operating as usual. Check email for travel updates.

Wonder where Amtrak and Brightline are storing the trains. Amtrak can drag everything out of Hialeah to Bear or Ivy City, or even a borrowed couple of tracks in Georgia. I count two complete trains and 33 loose cars in their yard from google maps. Without an HEP need or 79mph need, the five gennies and widecab could hook it all into one train and have it out of Florida in a day. Neither Brightline nor Tri Rail has trackage rights to get out of the region. It seems like Miami is in lesser danger than central Florida, so maybe all the trains come south for a few days? Is there even a place to store all the Brightline trains? You could also drag all the Brightline stock up to Jacksonville but that seems in more danger than Miami.

Yeah, there's really no need to move the trainsets north this time, both for Amtrak as well as Brightline.

The cone of the Milton has narrowed quite a bit from yesterday -- it looks to be on a direct path to make landfall at Sarasota and exit around Palm Bay.

Jacksonville, Fort Meyers and Sanford appear in the clear for now. They'll get some wind and rain, but that's normal wear and tear for Florida.

For future storms, it's a legitimate concern what they would have to do with their equipment, but it seems to be rare for both MIA and MCO to be impacted by a single storm, so evacuating the equipment online should be possible for Brightline, and as already mentioned, Amtrak can move a hospital train with 24 hours notice up to Georgia.

Reality is that the trains should be able to survive the "average" Cat 3 winds. Flooding is another story, but high ground for storage should have already been in the equation when they built things out for their maintenance facility.

When I think of Milton I think of Milton the Toaster, who used to make those Pop-Tarts toasty, Town of Milton MA, where a rump fleet of six? "Wartime" PCC cars still ply the bucolic MBTA Mattapan High-Speed (trolley) Line and where the town is standing up to the state of MA over their coercive transit-oriented development law. And Milton-Bradley, the subsumed board game manufacturer.

STrRedWolf wrote: ↑Tue Oct 08, 2024 7:06 pm If we're going to have more hurricanes hitting us, we better change the title of this thread to "2024 Hurricane Season Disruptions".

if both threads were started by GBN, I motion we nickname him "Hurricane Gilbert"!

I worry more about Sanford. The St. Johns river is not very much lower than the Sanford yard. The track across the bascule bridge appeared just about 5 feet above the St. Johns.

I worry more about Sanford. The St. Johns river is not very much lower than the Sanford yard. The track across the bascule bridge appeared just about 5 feet above the St. Johns. Auto train and Sun rail both store train sets at or near the Amtrak repair facility.

I cannot believe that the field in St. Pete was used for staging. You would think that after what happened in Minneapolis with a fabric roof would have raised red flags for the field use. Tropicana field will be a mess.

west point wrote: ↑Wed Oct 09, 2024 11:41 pm Tropicana field will be a mess.

CBS Radio News during the 5A CT hour, confirmed such.