Wyoming train traffic spikes as Colorado flooding reroutes trains

About eight more coal trains a day are rumbling through Wyoming as rail cars continue to be diverted from flood-damaged tracks in Colorado, a Union Pacific Railroad spokesman said Wednesday. Mark Davis said the UP line between Grand Junction, Colo., and Denver is out of service 30 miles west of Colorado’s capital city. As a result, northern Colorado coal traffic that normally would take that route is being diverted to Salt Lake City and Ogden, Utah, via the main UP line that comes through Cheyenne, he said. “That’s about a 600-mile detour,” Davis said. “It takes about an additional 72 hours to move that traffic.” The flooding in Colorado also forced the Burlington Northern Sante Fe Railroad to reroute two lines between Wyoming and Colorado to the east through Nebraska, BNSF spokesman Matt Jones said. The two lines go through Cheyenne. “The disruptions are in Colorado, not in Wyoming, but it is disrupting some of the traffic in Wyoming,” Jones said...more

Earlier this week Sue Krentz told me that while traveling from Las Cruces to her home in Az. she saw an unbelievable number if trains along I-10, and wondered if it had something to do with the floods.  She was right.