Light rail and snow - a challenging/fun combination...

I was scheduled to get off work just before midnight Saturday night; I was finally relieved at 3:15 AM Sunday morning at the 170th Elmonica westbound platform. It was a strange feeling to leave the train at the platform at 3:15 AM; this is certainly not a normal relief time for us.

Snow and ice make it necessary to run the trains all night to prevent the overhead wire from freezing over. With 750 volts running through the catanary wire, you would think it could not freeze. It can, and it does in some places. The train momentarily looses power when the pantrograph slides past a section covered by ice. It is an annoying feeling, and at first I did not understand what it was. A couple of times I had to stop and restart the train, other times I just kept on going.

The snow along the tracks was incredible. At some intersections on Burnside Avenue in Gresham, I knew there were probably tracks ahead of me. Since I could not see them, going forward was something I did on pure faith, a strange feeling with a 109 ton train...

<-- This shows a small mound of snow by one of our platforms. Many places the snow was much deeper than this, covering the tracks completely.


<--Our cyclops, the railroad light, is very bright. I caught this picture of the swirling snow illuminated by this strong light while stranded at a platform; this is not as picturesque as I wish it were, but it gives an idea what I enjoyed every time I glanced upward the past few days.

New info from KGW: Dave Salesky, KGW meteorologist, a busy man these days, just told us that this is the third worst snow storm in this area since they started keeping records - and we are heading for the number two spot. This is not really surprising. Since moving to Oregon in September 1991, I have not seen a worse snow storm around here.

Update: 14.5 inches in downtown Portland - more snow than we have seen since 1980! And, as I am writing this, Monday around lunch time, it is STILL snowing outside my living room window... I gotta stop praying for snow...

Saturday night I had a student with me again, Ms. L, who was with me on Friday night, too. She could not get to Ruby Junction in Gresham, so the powers that be decided to send her out with me again. We had a lot of fun together, since we sat and sat and sat and did little more than wait and wait and wait... Because we were operating under emergency conditions, she was not allowed to operate the train, but could only observe.

Here Ms. L is on her way back into Elmonica yard after we were told that the train we had spent a freezing 30 minutes waiting for, was stuck at Beaverton Central. -->

We were both dressed in layers and layers of clothing - I felt like I could barely move. Ms. L, being a student operator, had to wear a safety vest which reflected in such a cool way when I took this picture in the Elmo parking lot.

<--At the Elmonica platform a Wackenhut security officer kept us company while we waited for the train that never showed up... The reflective stips on both his and Ms. L's clothing made them both stand out when I took their picture.

My TriMet coat has the same kind of reflective coating; since I am the one who always take the pictures, here is a picture I took in my dark laundry room. There is a reflective strip like this on the back of the coat, too. I also have a safety vest like Ms. L's that I use when I am around my train on the alignment, day time or night time. We need to be visible to other rail operators and anybody else who needs to see us if we have to leave our trains when we are not at a platform.

More later today - Ms. L and I have some stories to tell... :-)