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Amtrak aiming to open new Tacoma depot
Bring it on. Who can complain about a new station and two more roundtrips for the Cascades… oh wait, somebody will.
It is good to see that the station will use the existing Milwaukee Road building as opposed to the original plan to tear it down and build a glass and concrete block building. The Sounder trains are already running much of the route, which includes a bit of Tacoma Rail, some new construction, and then a BNSF branchline. I’ll miss the view from Point Defiance, but the route avoids that congested single track stretch coming into Tacoma.
I have nothing against a new station for Tacoma and a reroute for the trains but why is it funded by the U. S. taxpayers? It should be funded by the taxpayers in Tacoma and Washington state. They are the ones that will benefit.
Let us go back in time and see what was lost…The Milw. Rd. had an electrified, double track main from Union Station Seattle to Tacoma. KaBoom!
And they did…
Freighthouse square is not on the Milw. main. It is near the beginning of the old Tacoma Hill discussed in Blair Kooistra’s article in “Trains of the 1970’s”, Classic Trains Special Edition No. 16.
About a block south of of Freighthouse Square is the new bridge built by Sound Transit to connect the former Milw. Tacoma Hill Line to the original Northern Pacific mainline between the Columbia River and Tacoma (later called the Prairie Line, severed through downtown Tacoma a number of years ago). This former BNSF line runs south past the location of the old Northern Pacific South Tacoma Shops to Lakewood. From Lakewood to Nisqually (on the BNSF mainline between Tacoma and Centralia) is a part of an NP Branch which ran through Olympia to Grays Harbor on the Washington Coast.
While Tacoma Rail operates the former NP/BNSF lines, Sound Transit owns the track. Tacoma Rail might still own the line from the original Milw. mainline a mile or so south to Freighthouse Square.
“The Milw. Rd. had an electrified, double track main from Union Station Seattle to Tacoma. KaBoom!”
Single track most of the way, from Black River Jct to Tacoma.
John Clark: The eight minute savings for a typical SEA-PDX trip is offset by the loss of the most scenic portion of the entire trip. The new routing allows plenty of opportunities to see graffiti adorned warehouses and Interstate 5, but no more Puget Sound/Commencement Bay and Tacoma Narrows scenery. It has been a few years since I have ridden that route, but if offered a choice, I would gladly take the water route.