BNSF completes track expansion in Twin Cities

Join the discussion on the following article:

BNSF completes track expansion in Twin Cities

“It [Midway Sub] handles much of the traffic through the Twin Cities…”

Not sure what this means. From just West of Hoffman Avenue, the BNSF has two parallel main tracks, the steeper Midway Sub and the easier St Paul sub, which come back together at University Avenue. In my experience, most trains used the St Paul sub, except for the intermodal trains needing access to their intermodal facility which was located on the Midway sub. This was back when the Midway sub was about half single track while the St Paul sub was double track.

Obviously, if the more heavily used St Paul sub was getting backed up, faster, over-powered intermodal trains could run around them on the steeper Midway sub since the grade wouldn’t be much of an issue.

BTW, is the Staples sub which goes around Northtown yard still partially single track and is it a bottleneck?

Must be doing something right. The “Empire Builder” (Amtrak #7 & #8) has been on-time, lately, here in Montana.

States should look at their property tax policies that in the past were an incentive to tear up double track that was not used to capacity, and now needs to be rebuilt.