What a crazy weather year we have had. The most recent hurricane that came through our region last week just seems to be icing on the cake for many. After the hurricane passed Wayne L. went to check on the railroad and found everything to be in good shape and at that point the river was high but was not at risk of creating any issues with the railroad. On Saturday Wes was out to the railroad and took some pictures of the water level and things continue to look ok with the Yellow River not reaching the railroad. By Sunday many of you read the email about John Tuten and how he got hit pretty hard by the hurricane with trees actually hitting his house. He has struggled to find local help but after last night’s email several members volunteered to go out Monday and help remove what every they could to help John and his family. This morning Wes and Scott meet at the railroad and loaded up and headed to South Carolina but before they left Scott sent pictures and information on what he found around the west end of the railroad. Robby checked on Calvin and Vivian who are in the Augusta area just west of John and they are doing well. They lost power but everything else was in good shape.

Back to Scott’s report he reports the west end of the railroad had no visible track damage which is great news. He reports that a lot of leaves and little twigs on the track. He did move a couple of larger limbs that had fall out of the way. However, he did find two large limbs that will need to be taken care of near the bridge coming out of the woods on the inner loop track as you are heading towards what we call the water line. This is in the same area that a tree was removed after our last big storm a few months ago. He did find one major safety issue with a limb that is about 30 feet up in the air dangling that we need to figure out how to get down ahead of our public run day if possible. If anyone has availability on Friday Robby plans to be at the site sometime around 2 p.m. to clean up around the railroad and perform some regular track maintenance on the east loop and two switches on the west end of the yard.

If the storm wasn’t enough, you probably heard about the chemical fire at the BioLab facility in Conyers along I-20 requiring many to shelter in place while the fire is put out and the air quality improves. At this point we do not believe this will impact our public run day on Saturday, but we continue to monitor the situation.

Assuming things continue to improve we also have our club meeting on Saturday at 11 a.m.