(The Washington Post published the following story by Don Phillips on its website on February 19.)
WASHINGTON, D.C. — CSX Transportation, a major Eastern freight railroad whose tracks are used by many commuter and Amtrak passenger trains, was largely shut down in the Mid-Atlantic region by the weekend snowstorm, prompting Virginia Railway Express to question whether CSX was adequately prepared.
CSX said it refused to let the passenger and commuter trains operate because it was the safe thing to do. It promised to resume “near normal” service in the Washington area by Thursday or Friday.
Commuter and passenger trains generally run over freight railroads’ tracks, except between Boston and Washington. VRE, for example, uses Norfolk Southern tracks from Manassas to Alexandria and CSX tracks from Fredericksburg to Washington. All VRE trains, therefore, use CSX tracks between Alexandria and Washington.
Norfolk Southern kept most of its service running throughout the storm, and offered to operate Manassas line trains to Alexandria, but CSX would not allow those trains to operate on its tracks into Washington from Alexandria, forcing VRE to suspend the service.
Amtrak’s New York-to-New Orleans Crescent service ran Saturday and Sunday, using CSX’s Alexandria-to-Union Station tracks and then Norfolk Southern’s to New Orleans, but was blocked from using the CSX track into Washington starting Monday.
VRE in the past two to three years spend hundreds of thousands of dollars for electric switch heaters between Alexandria and the Potomac River to be certain that its trains could operate in winter weather. The heaters worked but there were no trains to run over the tracks.
“A number of people have requested me to find out how well prepared CSX was for the snow emergency,” said VRE Chief Operating Officer Pete Sklannik Jr. VRE and Virginia “are concerned that we have made investments in the infrastructure,” and want to know what they got for their money, he said.
A CSX spokesman said maintenance manpower was stretched to the limit and would not have been able to go to the aid of stranded passenger trains, he said.
Even in the seven miles from Alexandria to Union Station, CSX did not want to take a chance that a passenger train would be stranded, said Jay S. Westbrook, CSX assistant vice president for passenger and operations planning.
“We made a wise and prudent decision to do the safe thing for the traveling public,” Westbrook said.
CSX yesterday allowed some passenger service on its tracks, starting with the Auto Train from Lorton to Sanford, Fla. Three VRE trains were to operate today from Fredericksburg, which uses an all-CSX route, and five from Manassas. Limited service also was to start on the two Maryland Commuter Service lines that run on CSX tracks to Baltimore and Brunswick.
CSX also would not allow MARC to run yesterday, and then MARC decided not to run service over the Amtrak-owned Penn Line because the government was shut down.
All Amtrak service south and west from Washington was halted by CSX when the storm hit. However, the Amtrak-owned and operated Northeast Corridor between Washington, New York and Boston, remained open with a reduced schedule. Amtrak did what it has done in the past during major snowstorms, keeping only two tracks open and not relying on switches to change tracks. One of the major problems in such storms is clogged or frozen switches.
Norfolk Southern continued operating almost all its lines, although on reduced schedules, and operated Amtrak passenger service between Philadelphia and Chicago. Vice President Robert C. Fort said the storm caused delays, closed some rail yards and forced cancellation of some freight trains. But he said only one line was closed, a low-traffic secondary line from Cincinnati to Portsmouth, Ohio.
Norfolk Southern even managed to keep its main Atlanta-to-New Jersey line open over a mountainous stretch between Manassas and Front Royal, overcoming 35 inches of snow and drifts at the summit near Markham, Va.
The CSX line over the Alleghenys west of Cumberland, Md., was blocked for at least two days but Norfolk Southern kept open its crossing of the Alleghenys through Altoona and Cresson, Pa., a few miles north of the CSX line.
CSX tracks between Washington and Richmond were blocked by snow, ice, fallen trees, frozen switches and stranded freight trains. In many cases new crews could not get to those stranded trains over snow-clogged roads, CSX said. CSX crews rode plow-equipped locomotives to cut down fallen trees and perform other maintenance because their trucks could not get to the railroad.