When a winter storm trapped a luxury passenger train near Donner Pass

Unfortunate accident because they were not supposed to be at the pass, there were well travelled safe routes to California, but the party were told of a "shortcut" that was untravelled and dangerous. They got stranded far from civilisation, with no chance of having someone stumble on them or know to send help.

Shouldn't have happened and they got help from some indigenous people that have been surviving there for quite a bit, I reckon - which tells me that people could survive then in those conditions.

Yeah I'd rather get eaten at that point

Commonly management tasked with say, rescuing a disabled train have a plan A and they get focused on trying to make plan A work even if plan A has now introduced so many further obstacles that a complete re-evaluation is appropriate.

Yesterday was the first day of in person exams at my employer (a large University) and we got reports that a key system wasn't working, the students were not able to take one of the exams on offer that morning as instead a "User friendly" something-went-wrong-tell-a-grown-up message appeared.

We didn't know, but in fact this bug could have been fixed by (temporarily) removing a single line of code from some server software, maybe 5-10 minutes to implement, test and ship to production under emergency conditions, then an afternoon of paperwork. However our early attempts to diagnose tickled a different bug making it seem hopeless, and so effort focused on manually tweaking the configuration of every single exam computer across the entire physical estate, which took maybe half an hour or more.

The bug could also have been worked around, with insight, by a single SQL query, taking maybe 10 seconds to write and execute. The software would still be broken, but those students could have taken their exam which is what mattered.

But we soldiered on with plan A. And that worked, it was just much slower. If it had taken a whole day I'd like to hope we'd have re-evaluated instead.

The Great Fire of London began in a bakery - such fires don't tend to burn down cities anymore

Well, for a start, most of LA, you'll note, is still there. The Great Fire of London destroyed 15% of the city's housing and displaced about half the population.

Large cities do not, these days, as a general rule, more or less just spontaneously burn down; the LA fires are driven by extreme weather conditions, and even then have not caused remotely the sort of destruction that you used to see from big urban fires.

> I don't think people ride the California Zephyr to get from Chicago to the Bay Area as quickly as possible.

Of course they don't. It's too slow. Our rail shouldn't be as bad as it is.

I love that trip, and I've taken it more than twice, oohing and ahhing all the way, but I do not need it to last as long as it does.

> The volume of snow to be collected would have been significantly greater than the resulting water.

Yes, dependent on the nature of the snow but a broad idea is that if you want a litre of water, you need five litres of snow.

It was January 13, 1952 they had airlines.

UP's Big Boy got some upgrades after a year or two of touring the UP system. It no longer needs a Diesel helper. Previously, the helper engine carried the modern Positive Train Control gear, and the steam engine cab had a display connected by a cable to the Diesel helper. Now, UP 4014 has its own PTC gear and antenna in the tender, so it's self-sufficient. UP runs that engine on heavily used main line track, so it needs to be fully connected to safety and dispatching systems.

This was mostly a power problem. UP 4014 had a small steam turbogenerator atop the boiler to power lights and such. Now it has three such generators, and there's enough electric power to run auxiliary equipment.

UP did a serious rebuild on the Big Boy, to original main-line standards. Many parts were fabricated from scratch. It's ready for regular use for decades. Most heritage railroads lack the resources for such major overhauls.

Here's the first test run with no Diesel, in May 2024.[1]

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=khJZ6NO5rhQ

Why, where and how is snow dirty?

The much bigger issue that steam is massively less dense that liquid water: roughly a 1:10 ratio. Loading up 10x more snow than you need water is no small task.

It's doubtful that you could build a high speed rail that could fly from Chicago through the Rockies to California in 10 hours. Even more doubtful that the cost benefit would be worth it considering you can fly from Chicago to the Bay Area in 3.5 hours. And you can't factor time spent getting to airport and not factor time to train station and time to stop at other major cities on the way (as trains are wont to do).

The Chinese route you mentioned does not need to go through one of the largest mountain ranges in the world. It's also at least 15-20% shorter than the distance from Chicago to SF, and experiences much less elevation change over the course of the journey. And the wiki article claims it "averages 10.5 to 13.5 hours", so there is a huge amount of variability in time to travel on that route.

I've driven both the 50 and 80 dozens of times in snowstorms. Yes, usually to ski (or come home from said activity).

It's just not that deadly. Literally, people don't die in snowstorms on the 50 or 80. I can't find record of any weather related automobile deaths. I'm sure it must have happened, but not in recent history.

Certainly travel in these conditions is not without risks, but I'm pretty sure the bigger risk for the day is on the slope. People get carried off in stretchers every day from every resort.

Which is not to say that everyone should do it - be equipped, have snow driving skills, and be prepared for the worst (stuck for many hours, which can happen). But don't overstate the risks or be so priggish (new word of the day) about the people who take them.

>common in Europe

European rail travel is mostly small-town-to-city (for commuting) and city-to-city, mostly when the cities aren't that far apart (a few hours at most).

International travel in Europe is much less common than interstate travel in the US, mostly because of the language and culture barriers, so most trips people take are in the same country. Our countries are far smaller, and the major cities of each country are far close to each other than the major cities in the US, so trains make sense.

Trains in Europe mostly replace cars, NOT planes. It's just that a lot more travel here can be done by car/train in a reasonable time.

To an average European, SFO to LAX by train would be just about bearable, depending on country and train speed. Anything much farther than that would probably be a flight.

Seriously. EU rail is great! Show up 15 minutes before my train leaves, sit on my phone (albeit often without reception) and pass the time sitting at a comfy table.

I took a first class trip in Italy recently. Food was fine and it's Italy, but those seats were very comfortable!

Likewise, it's a real shame that Europe has yet to develop cheap cargo trains.

Perhaps both regions should look into doubling their rail networks.

The question is, where?

Most of the midwest is empty, same with other states.

You have very dense areas in the east coast, which already leverage a large train network. In the west coast, Oregon and WA already have trains connecting their largest cities (Portland/Seattle/Vancouver).

California has caltrain, and internal city trains. In the USA, for passengers, it makes much more sense to fly than trains, the infrastructure costs and time costs of trains vs planes don't make sense.

The current one is sometimes in Portola, CA, old rail town trying to survive. Usually during their railway days (they have a rail museum). It’s a sight.

Thanks, that must be it.

https://www.google.com/maps/place/Yuba+Gap/@39.2821017,-120....