pleased
These three trailers appeared across the street from Fernley House while I was last down in the Bay Area. Lisa talked to one of the workers. He said these vans are primarily used for storage of spare parts. They are like mobile workshops with power, lighting, and so forth. Lisa says I'm not likely to see any of this because they don't usually open until about 1 AM when their work window opens. During the work window, all traffic stops on the railroad other than the extensive maintenance equipment pulling old ties and replacing them with the new ties that were pre-deployed along the right-of-way a few weeks ago.
As they pull old ties, they bring them back to Fernley, where they pile them up for later disposal.
It's a pity that there aren't a lot of good uses for railroad ties. You can't burn them (they're full of creosote), so aside from those that end up being used for landscaping, many of them end up in landfills.
We're happy to have the maintenance crews moving through making the railroad better and safer, although in this case their temporary shops are blocking our view of the tracks. Lisa says that because one of the two yard tracks has been temporarily reserved for use by the maintenance crews, switching operations in Fernley that use the two "house tracks" has been disrupted. It's all necessary work, though. Railroads take a lot of maintaining.
