Quake Causes Relatively Minor Disruptions of Rail Service

With more than 200 freight trains moving in and out of Southern California each day, Saturday’s 7.0 quake had the potential to paralyze traffic from one of the nation’s busiest rail hubs.

But aside from the derailment of a Amtrak passenger train, which caused the shutdown of a twin set of eastbound and westbound tracks, the earthquake caused relatively little disruption to rail traffic.

Union Pacific operates 110 to 120 freight trains in the Los Angeles area every day, and the Burlington, Northern & Santa Fe Railway runs another 75 freight trains daily through its Barstow switching yard.

Union Pacific trains were halted while crews inspected the tracks, then began rolling again. Burlington, Northern & Santa Fe trains faced longer delays because the disruption was caused on its main lines into and out of Los Angeles.

“We had to stop the trains for a while while we inspected the tracks, but that was all,” said Mike Furtney, a spokesman for Union Pacific.

Burlington, Northern & Santa Fe hoped to have repairs completed to the damaged track and trains running in both directions by early today.

All of Burlington, Northern & Santa Fe’s trains were put “on hold,” causing substantial delays, pending inspection of the tracks, said Lena Kent, a spokeswoman for the railroad.

Heavy equipment, including a 125-ton crane, and work crews began moving to the area about eight miles west of Ludlow to repair the tracks soon after the derailment. The Amtrak cars were said to have suffered minimal damage. The crane was able to lift the cars and place them back on undamaged track.

“We plan to work around the clock until we have the tracks repaired,” Kent said.

Union Pacific and Burlington, Northern & Santa Fe operate a state-of-the-art computerized communications center in San Bernardino. Outfitted with sensitive seismological equipment, train system operators know immediately when there is a major earthquake.

After a major quake is detected, trains are ordered to stop at once, pending an inspection of the tracks, Kent said.

The relative lack of major disruption is in keeping with the generally good record that railroads have of maintaining service during past California earthquakes, even as those quakes took heavy tolls on bridges and freeways. San Francisco’s rapid transit rail system played a critical role moving commuters in and out of the city after the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake caused the collapse of the Nimitz Freeway and part of the Bay Bridge.

Southern California railroad officials said this was the first derailment they could recall that was caused by an earthquake.

Service Is Expected to Resume Today

Amtrak said it was forced to cancel only one other train: a passenger train scheduled to leave Los Angeles for Chicago on Saturday night. An eastbound train en route to San Antonio on Saturday morning was delayed 3 1/2 hours while crews inspected tracks for damage.

Amtrak hoped to resume service to and from Chicago today.

Amtrak said other passenger rail lines in and out of Los Angeles continued to operate Saturday.

Because the earthquake hit at 2:46 a.m., the commuter trains operated by the Metropolitan Transportation Authority were not rolling when the ground began shaking.

The MTA operates a control center outfitted with seismic alarms attached to sensors along the rails and in subway tunnels. They are tripped when there is a major shaker.

The Metro Red Line subway began operating at 4:30 a.m., but before it did, MTA inspectors went over the entire track and found everything in good order, said spokesman Marc Littman.

Four people were injured in Saturday’s Amtrak derailment, but railroad officials said the number might have been much higher had the Southwest Chief not been slowed down by a freight train running on the tracks ahead of it.

Normally, the Southwest Chief would have been running through the Mojave Desert at its allowed speed of 90 mph. But it was operating at 60 mph when the quake hit because of a Burlington, Northern & Santa Fe Railway freight train ahead of it.

“We were very fortunate,” said Amtrak spokesman Ray Lang.

As it was, the train did have one decidedly bad stroke of misfortune: it was rolling down the tracks roughly 10 miles from the epicenter of the earthquake at precisely the moment the fierce temblor struck.

The violent shaking knocked 21 of the 24 cars off the tracks, including all 12 of the freight cars, many of which were carrying U.S. mail, attached to the back end of the train. Despite the derailment, the train was able to maintain its power.

With the power still on, Amtrak personnel were able to feed the 155 passengers and crew breakfast while buses were dispatched to the desert to pick them up and bring them to Union Station in Los Angeles.

Many of the passengers were elderly, requiring canes, and were helped off the train by firefighters and railroad personnel after the buses arrived at 9:30 a.m.

The cars remained more or less upright, never tipping over completely.

Passenger Erica Parsons of San Bernardino said it helped that the earthquake struck while most passengers were asleep in their chairs.

“We didn’t know what had happened,” she said. “We thought we ran over something. After a few minutes, they came through and told us it was an earthquake.” After a couple of hours, she said, she fell back asleep.

The passengers began arriving at Union Station at 1:30 p.m., about five hours after the westbound Chicago-to-Los Angeles train was scheduled to arrive. The Southwest Chief left Chicago on Thursday afternoon on what normally is a 33-hour run.

Times staff writer Tom Gorman contributed to this story.