I'm puzzled by the comment about PH not being a good spot to watch trains this weekend. It's rare to see many movements here during the daylight hours most weekends anymore...
But unless they put what's left of 383 onto either main 3 or main 4 today, there was a westbound visible from the freeway this morning. I don't recall seeing anything there last night. Just before 4 this afternoon I observed boxcars sitting on the curve where the Mt Clemens Sub leaves the Flint Sub, and possibly two different occupied tracks at the west end of the yard (it's hard to see much at highway speed, but it wasn't totally devoid of cars as I had half expected to observe).
I did see that the Feds (STB, Homeland, Coast Guard, etc.) had shown up either last night or this morning, and have taken charge of the activities around the tunnel. Hulcher seemed to be operating out of the Amtrak station parking lot when I drove up to the barricades on my way home from work last night. I certainly don't envy their crews this weekend- between the heat and the tunnel, it can't be the most pleasant place they could possibly be working right now. On the other hand, the vegetation had been getting pretty dense between 16th Street and the tunnel entrance, so maybe they'll knock it down again as a result of the cleanup work.
Like everyone else, I'm curious how long it will take to get the mess cleaned up and the infrastructure fixed enough to start running trains again. With the incredibly short closure time we see in other places (like the derailment in Swanson, Ohio a couple weeks ago), it strikes me as odd that they can't get it cleaned up and reopened by tonight or tomorrow morning, but I suppose when there's no room to plow everything off to the side of the right-of-way to get the track back in place, it's a little unreasonable to expect that they'll have traffic moving again in just a day or two.
I take it the crews based out of PH are pretty much stuck until the tunnel is reopened, correct?
Charles W.
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