The freight train is still rolling despite a decline in coronavirus

The sound of traffic and airplanes has died down in much of Los Angeles County and California when health orders get people indoors.

But if you listen carefully, you will still hear train whistles as they transport and transport food, consumer products, chemicals and livestock to and from factories, shops, and ports throughout the country.

At the Burlington Northern Santa Fe Railway, or BNSF, the transit center at La Mirada, Russ Abbott, a locomotive engineer, said that when the pandemic first struck, the only clue that life outside the railroad had changed was his faster travel between houses and work .

“It was very fast,” he said, describing the lack of traffic on the road. “That’s different.

“But here, no one is sick, we continue to drive the car and everything feels normal,” he said to a curious visitor who sat in the cabin of the 3,800 BNSF locomotive horsepower he was driving on a railroad track parallel to Stage Road in this regard. eastern suburbs of Los Angeles County.

Over the past two months, the COVID-19 pandemic and lockouts have disrupted the national supply chain and have been hammering all sectors of the transportation industry. The railroad of goods transporters was also affected, but it did not reach the level of the airlines and car manufacturers.

That’s because trains carry important items during this pandemic, including frozen meat and vegetable oil, and chemicals such as chlorine bleach and sand for fracking. Abbott bears witness to this supply chain on his work day, soaking in click-click the wheels of the train, carrying thousands of tons of supplies, as they rolled across the joints and squatted from the railroad tracks.

At La Mirada, the track runs from the northwest to southeast, behind the Home Depot, the International Paper warehouse, and the U.S. Food outlet A small spur carries the train west to the Amazon fulfillment center, the Frito-Lay warehouse and the Staples fulfillment center.

The railroad lines give these companies direct connections to the coastal ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach, as well as the country’s vast interior.

And while Abbott enjoys moving back and forth between suppliers and distributors in the county, it is the Cajon Pass that he likes.

“I still feel cold every time I pass by,” he said, describing the beautiful journey through the mountains of San Bernardino and San Gabriel, which is now covered in bright poppies and wildflowers. “It never gets old.”

The Tehachapi Circle is a three-quarter-mile spiral linking the San Joaquin Valley to the Mojave Desert, 77 feet high.

(Carolyn Cole / Los Angeles Times)

And even though Abbott hasn’t changed drastically since the beginning of the year, there are differences, said Lena Kent, a BNSF spokesman.

Employees now mostly enter information and data via the iPad outside, so they don’t have to gather in the office; the train is swept between shifts; and operators and other employees wearing masks to prevent the spread of coronavirus.

“But safety has always been a mainstay,” said Kent, who noted that railroad crews, who work with powerful propulsion engines, are generally always small in number and spread.

Russ Abbott climbed onto his BNSF locomotive.

(Carolyn Cole / Los Angeles Times)

In addition, the volume transferred has shrunk, or in Kent’s words, “softened.”

At La Mirada, depreciation is related to the decline in goods entering the ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach, which have been hit by a combination of trade war disputes and an economic slowdown related to coronavirus.

On Thursday, Gene Seroka, executive director of the Port of Los Angeles, it was announced at a press conference that the movement was 80% from what this time last year.

Port statistics show container volume down 15.5%, and officials expect the business to remain “soft” for the next few months.

He noted a sharp decline in the fast fashion business, cars, scrap metal and steel, with an increase in products originating from Latin America.

On the railroad track, that is the movement of auto parts has dropped by more than 90% compared to the same week last year.

“We have moved from uncertainty” as a result of the trade war “to radical uncertainty,” said Mario Cordero, executive director Long Beach Harbor. “I don’t think anyone can predict where we will go as a country with our economy. … I don’t see normality for 2020, or for that matter for 2021. At least in terms of business normalcy. “

Cordero also points to empty sailing statistics, which is a scheduled ship cancellation. He said in the first quarter of this year, there were 61 empty voyages to the ports of Long Beach and Los Angeles. Forty-eight is expected for this quarter.

Lena Kent, spokeswoman for the Burlington Northern Santa Fe Railway at the BNSF transit hub.

(Carolyn Cole / Los Angeles Times)

“That has never happened before,” he said, and that meant real money and jobs. Without doubt, that the reduction in traffic will affect all sectors of the supply chain, including railways, he said.

Then there was a decline in coal demand, which paralyzed the economy in the Midwest and mountain states.

Last week, more than 340 BNSF employees were laid off in Montana and Wyoming, where coal demand has plummeted. Some BNSF railroad facilities in Montana, Wyoming, Kansas, North Dakota, Wisconsin and Nebraska are now permanently closed or temporarily reduced in size.

And other railroad companies, like Union Pacific, increasingly squeezed by the decline in demand for oil and coal, according to published reports.

While freight traffic has declined across the country, workloads remain “relatively stable” in the small center at La Mirada, Kent said.

More than 340 BNSF employees were laid off this month in Montana and Wyoming, where demand for coal has plummeted. While freight traffic has declined throughout the country, workloads have remained relatively stable at the hub at La Mirada.

(Carolyn Cole / Los Angeles Times)

Warren Buffett, whose Berkshire Hathaway owns the BNSF, remains optimistic about the US economy and the railroad industry, which has a climate footprint of only a fraction of trucking.

“Basically nothing can stop America,” Buffett said at the Berkshire Hathaway virtual shareholder meeting earlier this month. “American magic, American magic always wins and it will happen again.”

Times staff writer Susanne Rust and photographer Carolyn Cole are embarking on a road trip across California. They aim to vote for those in remote parts of the country as they wrestle with the worst health and economic disasters in our lives.