KCS and NS have petitioned the Surface Transportation Board to allow NS to use 156 miles of KCS trackage between Kansas City and Mexico, Mo., and for KCS to use 105 miles of NS trackage from Mexico to St. Louis. The two railroads have been using such routing on an emergency basis since, according to their STB petition “neither carrier is continuously able to directly traverse between the Kansas City and St. Louis areas solely via its own routing.”
They are seeking STB permission to continue the practice until August 31 because “after a record-setting month of rainfall in May, the state of Missouri is dealing with significant river flooding, breaching levees and flooding [of] many surrounding communities. The flooding is ongoing and additional rainfall may cause additional impacts.”
The only trackage UP reported closed as of June 10 was the River Subdivision between Kansas City and Jefferson City, Mo., and the Pinckneyville Subdivision near Chester, Mo. Meanwhile, UP says it continues to closely monitor service on its Sedalia Subdivision, another Kansas City-Jefferson City route, where Amtrak reports its River Runner service remains suspended until June 12.
BNSF Railway says flood-caused service outages continue south of Omaha and in several places along the Mississippi River. In addition, a semi-truck striking a railroad bridge June 10 near Drace, Ark., 35 miles northwest of Memphis, has halted trains on the Thayer Subdivision.
