Stormy weather, slides slow rail traffic from Vancouver through Seattle

BNSF Railway crews cleaned up after several weather-related delays this weekend along its lines from Vancouver through Seattle.

They addressed damage a fallen tree caused near Felida and cleared about 50 trees over tracks north of Seattle. On Friday, crews had to dump 15 rail cars’ worth of rocks to stabilize the roadbed for high water just over the Canadian border, railway spokesman Gus Melonas said.

A southbound Amtrak train struck a tree that fell down over tracks in the Felida area Saturday, he said. It was a minor episode, he added, but crews had to come out and remove the tree from the train.

Late Monday night, a slide hit tracks near Everett. Then, early Tuesday morning, BNSF trains along the main line received word from the track signal system that trees had fallen over tracks about 4 miles south of Mukilteo, Melonas said. About 50 trees slid down an 100-foot embankment, he said.

The slides prompted a 48-hour stoppage for passenger trains, which will end at 3 a.m. Thursday.

“Although this has been one of the most challenging years in terms of continuing rainfall in the Vancouver-Seattle corridor,” he said, “we’ve avoided a number of slide situations that typically would have caused blocking events.”

Drainage work and reinforcements and sensors around problem hillsides have helped, he said.

Since 1914, when BNSF started tracking, the rails have seen about 1,000 significant, traffic-slowing slides.

Typically, the tracks through Felida see more slide activity, Melonas said, but it appears that the slide zones there have settled some, at least for this year.