I spoke to Oregon Senator Betsy Johnson this morning. Her district in NW Oregon includes the POTB line across the Coast Range, and she said that some of the worst damage is right at the west end of the Salmonberry River canyon, where the Salmonberry joins the Nehalem River. The Nehalem had some of the worst flooding (on the upper Nehalem, for example, the town of Vernonia had nearly 10 inches of rain) in the Coast Range, and all that water washed downstream right into the path of the POTB, which follows the Nehalem from Salmonberry to Wheeler.

One of POTB's ex-BN SD9s is sitting on the siding at Buxton, just west of Banks on the east side of the Coast Range. At Banks, there's a cut of empty cars delivered by the P&W that can't go anywhere for the moment. I suspect that P&W will just pull them back off the main to clear it for any work crews heading up the mountain.