The untold story of the Midwest flooding is how the lowly rolling stock has singlehandedly saved the Midwest. Without rolling stock weighting down the bridges, they would simply drift away!

And, bridges connect communities for without them, no one would be connected.

Here's a dramatic example of rolling stock holding back a floating suburbia, from Newsweek, July 7-14, 2008 (I don't know how they can publish something in the future, crystal ball perhaps)

http://www.newsweek.com/id/143787

It's a gamble though. In Cedar Rapids, the CRANDIC put a bunch of freight cars on their bridge across the Cedar River, only to have the bridge topple into the flood taking a good chunk of their freight capacity with it. There are other incidences, such as a massive flood on the Missouri River in 1912, where the CNW put about eight of their locomotives on a bridge (Pierre, SD) during a flood, only to lose everything. I don't think anyone sticks engines on bridges in those circumstances any more!


Kent in SD