Winter
Keeping the Northern Transcon open during the winter is a significant challenge, whether from snow in the Midwest and mountains or rain on the west coast. Heavy rains have the potential to cause mudslides along Puget Sound between Seattle and Everett and in the Nisqually, Washington area between Tacoma and Olympia. For example, in early January, 2006 there were four slides between Seattle and Everett. This was followed in late January, 2006 and again in early February, 2006 by mudslides both between Seattle and Everett and around Nisqually. Following the clearing of a slide no passenger train can run for 48 hours to ensure that the slide area has stabilized.
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Famous quotes containing the word winter:
“The Roman rule was, to teach a boy nothing that he could not learn standing. The old English rule was, “All summer in the field, and all winter in the study.” And it seems as if a man should learn to plant, or to fish, or to hunt, that he might secure his subsistence at all events, and not be painful to his friends and fellow men.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“O Westmoreland, thou art a summer bird,
Which ever in the haunch of winter sings
The lifting up of day.”
—William Shakespeare (1564–1616)
“Now is the winter of our discontent
Made glorious by this son of York;
And all the clouds that loured upon our house
In the deep bosom of the ocean buried.”
—William Shakespeare (1564–1616)