Surrounded
I'm going to take a brief break from my trip to the Northern Plains by bringing you this photo...
Due to the rapid snowmelt in the spring of 2019, river flooding was rampant and very serious across portions of the Midwest, with the hardest hit being Nebraska, Iowa, southeastern South Dakota, and portions of Minnesota.
But those waters flowed south into Davenport, IA in late March, and by April 1, Downtown Davenport was becoming submerged by the Mississippi River.
Canadian Pacific decided to do something different with the flooding this year. The river crested at one of the highest levels ever recorded on April 6, but even so, CP was determined to keep the trains moving. But not without a cost: a few days earlier, they burned up every traction motor on 3 different engines by getting them wet, costing CP quite a penny, I'm sure.
Even with that, they didn't give up. Here, CP 8007 gets ready to pick up cars that are coming in from off to the right, in over 2' of water. As long as the tops of the wheels were above water, CP thought they could push the cars to this engine, and then CP 9760, the engine on the far left, could haul them northward on their way to Minneapolis.
It took them nearly 6 hours to do, and I couldn't stay up for it, as it was already past midnight, 4 hours into the operation, and I had to leave. Nevertheless, the scene is surreal: the two engines are seen here pulling up to the edge of CP's sandbag dike, which took ~20 employees to assemble, and to keep the tracks at least from becoming submerged. They will have to breach the dike to allow the cars to get pulled through, and a large pump just on the edge of the screen will do the duty of frantically pumping that water back into the Mississippi.
And so, in a surreal scene with ducks wondering what the heck is going on here on the far left side of the photo, CP 8007 and its crew get ready to receive 100 or so cars with soggy wheels in Davenport, IA, with the Government Bridge behind it. Only 6" of sandbags protect the engines from doom, with the river literally on both side of the train, early in the morning of April 7, 2019. This photograph was taken from River Road...which was very appropriately named.
Surrounded
I'm going to take a brief break from my trip to the Northern Plains by bringing you this photo...
Due to the rapid snowmelt in the spring of 2019, river flooding was rampant and very serious across portions of the Midwest, with the hardest hit being Nebraska, Iowa, southeastern South Dakota, and portions of Minnesota.
But those waters flowed south into Davenport, IA in late March, and by April 1, Downtown Davenport was becoming submerged by the Mississippi River.
Canadian Pacific decided to do something different with the flooding this year. The river crested at one of the highest levels ever recorded on April 6, but even so, CP was determined to keep the trains moving. But not without a cost: a few days earlier, they burned up every traction motor on 3 different engines by getting them wet, costing CP quite a penny, I'm sure.
Even with that, they didn't give up. Here, CP 8007 gets ready to pick up cars that are coming in from off to the right, in over 2' of water. As long as the tops of the wheels were above water, CP thought they could push the cars to this engine, and then CP 9760, the engine on the far left, could haul them northward on their way to Minneapolis.
It took them nearly 6 hours to do, and I couldn't stay up for it, as it was already past midnight, 4 hours into the operation, and I had to leave. Nevertheless, the scene is surreal: the two engines are seen here pulling up to the edge of CP's sandbag dike, which took ~20 employees to assemble, and to keep the tracks at least from becoming submerged. They will have to breach the dike to allow the cars to get pulled through, and a large pump just on the edge of the screen will do the duty of frantically pumping that water back into the Mississippi.
And so, in a surreal scene with ducks wondering what the heck is going on here on the far left side of the photo, CP 8007 and its crew get ready to receive 100 or so cars with soggy wheels in Davenport, IA, with the Government Bridge behind it. Only 6" of sandbags protect the engines from doom, with the river literally on both side of the train, early in the morning of April 7, 2019. This photograph was taken from River Road...which was very appropriately named.