Any rail shutdown is a big and very bad deal. But THIS time of year is particularly the worst. With the worldwide food shortages it is beyond critical that we don’t let recently harvests grain rot in the countryside waiting for unit rail shipments to haul it to market. A unit train has 125 cars that EACH hold 30,000 bushels of grain! Around the “Cornhusker state” farms don’t have enough on site storage for their entire crop (especially since yields are up 75% in the last 20 years) small town elevators don’t either. The surplus crops are simply piled up on the ground near elevators while they pray it doesn’t rain. Some places will pile it up then cover with large tarps, not 100% effective, but better than nothing. When they get their rail cars, these piles are collected right away and rotted grain destroyed. Every days delay in rail shipment means more % is lost. With global grain shortages (drought, Russo-Ukrainian War, mysterious fires…) we can’t afford to be screwing up things further.