Trains detouring on foreign lines

I am not sure of the answer.  But back during the great flood of 1993, the Santa Fe must have detoured over every railroad in the Midwest to get from Chicago to their unflooded lines in western Kansas and Oklahoma and Texas to get to the west coast.

I don't think any railroad could have agreements before hand for the wide spread need to route trains where ever their was capacity to take them. The Union Pacific hosted numerous Santa Fe trains from Chicago to Texas and Chicago-Kansas City on the former Missouri Pacific lines. The ex MP lines also hosted NS trains Kansas City-St. Louis  as did the BN's former Frisco between Kansas City-Springfield-St. Louis. I was at Pacific MO and caught an eastbound NS train on the ex Mopac and 30 minutes later and eastbound NS on the ex Frisco. 

Dan 

Given the number of home road alternate routes available to today's Class 1 railroads, I don't believe this is as prevalent as in the past.  For example, last year when BNSF was having all their winter related issues across the northern tier, they simply diverted traffic to either the central corridor or the southern transcon.  In the east, both CSX and NS have multiple ways of getting from east to west or north to south so if a derailment or weather related problem blocks one route, they shift traffic to another.  Within the past year, this was the case when NS experienced the derailment of a multi-level autorack train on the west side of Altoona or, more recently, when CSX had the derailment of the crude oil train at Mt. Carbon, WV.  In both instances, traffic was diverted to alternate NS or CSX routes.

From my experience, the regional railroads don't appear to have any kind of reciprocity with their connections.  When MMA's mainline was shut down following the Lac Megantic tragedy, we had cars stuck in Maine that had to be returned to Quebec.  We ended up having to make all the arrangements and pay other railroads to get those cars returned to our plant site.  Had it been a Class 1, they would have arranged a reroute with no additional cost or involvement necessary on our part.

Curt

I had a conversation with a tax rep for one of the railroads that operate in Florida and he characterized the sharing of track use on other railroads as a requirement. He indicated that railroads are required to allow other railroads to use their lines when needed, and that they all have signed agreements to address compensation for the number of miles and tonnage. The railroad with ownership of the track or trackage rights maintains control of the traffic flow. I work in central assessment of railroads and do not work for a railroad so I may not be using all of the correct nomenclature, but this is the general idea that was communicated to me. 

In the classic era, right up into the 1990's, the typical process was that the detouring railroad furnished train crews, and the hosting railroad furnished a pilot.  It is still done that way if an Amtrak train detours off of its regular route.  Historically, passenger trains would get two home road crews before entering the detour route, and they would alternate working and resting if the detour was long.  I knew a Santa Fe Los Angeles Division passenger Engineer whose regular assignment was LA-Barstow, and, in the early 1960's, his crew and another LA Santa Fe crew worked and rested a detour from LA to Kansas City through Nevada, Utah, Wyoming, Colorado and Kansas via UPRR under the guidance of UPRR pilots.

Subsequent FRA requirements for route familiarization and merger-driven haulage agreements have resulted in the older process being followed some of the time with occasional operation of the detouring train by host road crews, though this is not the norm.  Today, most host railroads would not have extra crews available much of the time.

A Santa Fe Rules Examiner another Santa Fe Road Foreman of Engines and I were sent to Muscatine, Iowa in 1993, to become qualified between Muscatine and Kansas City, so that we could pilot and qualify Santa Fe crews on detours.  This line consisted of part ex-Rock Island and part ex-Milwaukee Road, and was, at that time, operated by Canadian Pacific.  It was not a high density railroad, although it had block signals for most of the way and maximum speeds of 50-60 MPH.  After hours and hours of waiting, they finally ran a train, and we both rode it.  The track was surprisingly good, the CP crew was friendly, and the Milwaukee Road portion had a quaint and ancient CTC system with relay houses constructed of wood framing and asbestos shingle siding.  We never made it to Kansas City because of long waits for meets.  In fact we never made it to the old joint CRI&P/MILW joint track that was part of the spine line.  We sat for hours waiting for a van to rescue us.  By the time we arrived in Kansas City by van, the Santa Fe had managed to get enough trains moving that they decided to eliminate Muscatine to KC as a detour route.  I slept for 16 hours and let somebody else worry about detours for a while.

Thanks for the interesting replies.