In May 2017, major flooding in Missouri caused BNSF Railway to shut down its River Subdivision between St. Louis and Memphis. Normally, at Ste. Genevieve, MO, Union Pacific's local moves traffic for its customer, Mississippi Lime, using trackage rights over the BNSF River Sub from here on north for approximately 10 miles to access its own line in Crystal City, MO. At Crystal City, the lime cars are then forwarded on to another UP local (LSE-57) which takes them to St. Louis over UP's De Soto Sub. However, when the BN River Sub closes due to flooding, derailments, or other calamities, Union Pacific has to re-open the normally out-of-service Mosher Branch of the former Missouri & Illinois (M&I) Railway between Ste. Genevieve and Derby Jct. in Park Hills, MO, in order for Mississippi Lime's traffic to access the De Soto Sub. At Derby, the line joins in with a regularly-used UP branch to reach the De Soto Sub main line at Bismarck.
The video starts off with the LSH-20 running southwest a few hundred feet east of the Interstate 55 overpass on the outskirts of Ste. Genevieve. Subsequent views include the Missouri towns of New Offenburg, Weingarten, and Park Hills. A special feature of this video is footage of the train crossing the famous Rough Creek trestle, one of the few of its kind in this part of the country.
Unfortunately, I wanted to capture more video during this run, but my mobile phone developed software issues towards the end of the day and kept crashing, so several scenes were not included. Nevertheless, I hope you enjoy my home video of the UP LSH-20 local using this rarely-used, historic route. -Scott Nauert
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