News

Anyone with a working knowledge of local history of rail service will remember that Tacoma outpaced the backwater of Seattle during the 1870s, particularly after the Northern Pacific Railroad selected the City of Destiny as the terminus for its transcontinental railroad in 1873.

Seattle feared that it would be cut off from the rest of the economic boom in the growing West Coast if it didn’t have rail service to bring settlers – and their dollars – to the Emerald City and to shuttle its lumber and products to markets back East. That changed when Henry Villard gained controlling shares of the Northern Pacific and pledge to run rails between Tacoma and Seattle, where he just happened to have significant real estate holdings he was interested in selling.

According to the Railway Track and Structures (RT&S) website, Norfolk Southern Rail Bridge has suspended service in Missouri between Moberly and Kansas City. The bridge and track weight capacity on this stretch is 286,000 pounds. The Class 1 railroad issued a service alert saying that it is “working with our interline partners to detour freight traffic over alternative gateways. Customers with traffic operating to and from the Kansas City area should expect a 48- to 72-hour delay.”

Debris and high floodwaters have been issues for the past several days near the Grand River Bridge in Brunswick, Missouri. National Weather Service (NWS) Flood Warnings, housed inside the FreightWaves SONAR Critical Events platform, remain posted along the Missouri River. A Twitter video shows the bridge dropping into the river on the evening of October 2. The NWS Missouri Basin River forecast center tweeted earlier today, October 3, that backwater from debris caused the Brunswick gauge to rise. R&S Track is monitoring the situation with the Norfolk Southern Rail Bridge.