Yesterday morning, I heard the DS on the radio change a track bulletin for a UP crew at Pasco from the PG&E Boardman coal train to a METHK if I heard them right. So they were clearly detouring at that time.

The Super Fruit was in the hole at Cold Springs, and a work train pulled in behind them and tied down as the crew had died. There might have been one at Juniper too. The dispatcher mentioned that Hinkle was supposed to get two northbounds out and hadn't been able to.

The hump at Hinkle is supposed to have closed early this week, and there is another round of mechanical layoffs. Employees are bumping around trying to hold or just plain laid off.

The METHK suggests that they couldn't get CP to preblock trains for them, and Hinkle will have to flat switch them at least to get the east and short cars out. I imagine they will also keep something like the HKGR (now a PDGR?) as it did all the local work setting out at LaGrande and Huntington (likely Nampa and Pacatello too?). The rest should be block swapping from through trains at Hinkle? The Super Fruit had already become an early morning turn out of Hinkle that also acts as a Wallula transfer. Will the Super Fruit block be picked up by a Q or Z train for Green River to be combined with the Delano "Salad Shooter"? Not sure how they will expedite reefer empties back to Hinkle.

Will be interesting to see how much flat switching Hinkle will be expected to do, if the block swapping scheme is instituted and what trains get tangled up. And can Albina absorb the rest of Hinkles work? It looks like the METHK/MHKET might remain, what other HK trains?