Yes, it’s true. No more straight-shot across North Dakota from Fargo to Surrey (Minot). But on the bright side, contrary to what you might have thought, GN’s line from St. Cloud through Sauk Centre to Moorhead is still there (but it has moved).
Well, that’s if you believe the “The Great Northern today” map on pages 46-47 of the December 2015 issue of TRAINS magazine. There are so many mistakes, it’s hard to count them all. The map attempts to show what’s left of GN lines that were in use in 1956. Here are the highlights:
*It shows GN all the way from Lookout through Bieber to Keddie, CA. Really, Bieber to Keddie was WP.
*The map tries to show the ex-SP&S and OT. Northwest of Portland, only the Goble to Wauna segment is shown in service, omitting the Willbridge to Goble part that is the PNWR.
*The map shows an abandoned line from Pasco to Cheney which hugs the Snake River (also on the map). This logically would be the SP&S line, but it also shows an ex-GN line to the west of there also between Pasco and Cheney. This of course, is really ex-NP.
*The way Dean and Newport, WA are indicated on the map is in the exact alignment of the present BNSF ex-NP route between Spokane and Sandpoint. Evidently their mapmakers cloned this off some kind of BNSF map.
*In Western Montana, Columbia Falls to Kalispell is indicated as being operated by the MMT (Mission Mountain Railroad), but the MMT between Stryker and Eureka is not indic
I got a chuckle out of the line mentioned above from Huron to Yale, SD. On the map it’s marked as a shortline. The name of that shortline is shown as CP.
As Mark stated, the alignments shown on the main map as being ex-GN between Sandpoint and Newport (see my POVA clarification below) and between Spokane and Pasco are in fact ex-NP. One could also include a few miles of still-intact ex-SP&S between Latah Jct. on the west edge of Spokane and Fish Lake (just north of Cheney), but that would be difficult to show on a map of this scale.
Newport has been placed too far south, almost where Otis Orchards, WA, would be on today’s ex-NP “Funnel.” For that matter, the map’s emphasis of the relationship between the Hill Lines in general blurs the clarity of it being ex-SP&S from Pasco to Vancouver, WA, and mostly ex-NP from there north to Seattle.
Same goes for Wishram south, which was anything but a solid GN route. Mark pointed out the true endpoint being Bieber, not Keddie. Also, the only GN trackage on that corridor was Bend to Chemult and Klamath Falls to Bieber. The 75 miles between Chemult and Klamath Falls used trackage rights over SP (now UP).
Back to that POVA line from Sandpoint to Newport, it would be more accurate to show POVA from Dover, ID, (not Sandpoint) west and slightly southwest toward Newport. THAT would be the true depiction of that ex-GN segment.
The branch to Coeur d’Alene is shown as completely gone. In fact, today’s Coeur d’Alene Sub uses approximately three miles of ex-GN track from Post Falls, ID, eastward to almost Huetter (located roughly halfway between the WA/ID state line and CdA), plus another mile or so of ex-MILW from there to the current end of track just east of Huetter. Contrary to what’s been published in a number of articles and books on Northwest railroads, the CdA branch which survived into the BN and BNSF eras is NOT purely ex-NP.
On the ex-GN route between Spokane and Everett, the first ten miles or more from Spokane west to a point roughly one mile east of Lyons should not be shown as ex-GN because that trackage is long gone. What BNSF uses
What is really the most unsettling thing about this map and other trains magazine maps (like the one in the Newswire about the NS-CP merger proposal that was almost as bad as the GN map) is that TRAINS evidently doesn’t care that they’re producing a shoddy product. They just keep on doing it. TRAINS would do well to ask historical associations (Such as in the case of the GN map) for assistance in such ventures. Not only are there people still alive that could proofread such things from memory, but these people would be more than happy to be involved. I wonder if TRAINS has ever done this or would consider this?
While there are people alive than can verify such things. They may not be active in the appropriate historical society, and thus even harder to find than the historical society. We are basically 30 years beyond the last round of mergers that created the Class 1’s we have today.
More on the GN map: On March 11, 2016, TRAINS posted a “GN then and now” map in the “Railroads” portion of this site. It stated, "“This map originally appeared in the December 2015 issue of TRAINS Magazine.” Of course, this was not true. The TRAINS website has “a” map, but it has little resemblance to the error-ridden map found in its magazine. After some Emails and this thread pointing out the errors, a highly-corrected version exists on the website far from how it “appeared in the December 2015 issue.” (Still there are several glaring mistakes.)
TRAINS does very poorly on its maps overall. Why must it exacerbate the problem by being additionally disingenuous about how they were originally published? If it’s too ashamed to acknowledge this was a different map, why didn’t they simply publish the one from the December 2015 issue?
The very small map of BNSF’s Funnel on page 6 of the March 2016 issue had its share of problems too. It repeated an error seen in many previous maps from the same area by showing a significant deviation near the Funnel’s mid-point, implying that present-day BNSF uses the pre-1965 NP alignment near Athol, Idaho. You can drive on that old grade today, but trains have been taking a much more direct path through those hills for half a century.
On the east side of Spokane, their map shows a slight S-bend that tells me they were tracing UP’s track through there and wound up showing it as BNSF.
West of Spokane, BNSF’s ex-NP line is clearly shown dropping south then southwest toward Pasco, but they forgot to include the ex-GN toward Seattle, as well as the short stretch of SP&S that drops south and ties in with the NP at Lakeside Jct. (I’m trying NOT to make references to BN-built segments such as Latah Creek Bridge and its new connections to the SP&S and GN, as well as the Fish Lake-Lakeside Jct. connector, just to keep things simple.)
No lines labeled as UP are shown on the map, but the line heading northeast from Sandpoint, which one can only assume was meant to be BNSF’s ex-GN to Whitefish, MT, is very clearly following the UP alignment. My guess is that this map was still a work in progress when it got imported into the final layout and uploaded to the printer without any further oversight.
The accompanying text makes a vague reference to the Funnel also carrying UP traffic, which without any further clarifaction in verbage or visuals has probably left many readers to believe UP trains literally use BNSF from Sandpoint clear to Spokane.
You’re right, Mike; UP on the former SI. One significant exception is between Dover, Idaho, and the diamond in Sandpoint. The original SI through the heart of Sandpoint caused considerable street congestion when UP and CP started increasing their international traffic over this route in the late 1990s. That original Dover-Sandpoint section was abandoned and converted into a trail, and UP trains now use what is mostly a joint BNSF/UP/POVA track segment between Dover and Boyer/Sandpoint. A bit more complex than that, but you get the idea.
[banghead]Quit relying on GIS data… then start doing their homework at the few railroad museum libraries out there…TRAINS blew it on their assessment of the museum situation. They fell into the crap-hole that associates the museums solely with the preservation of the full scale shiny toys that run on top of the rails at the expense of everything else. Archives and paper histories, maps etc. need preservation as well or you are gonna get more of the pushbutton GIS generated crap masquerading as fact…[soapbox][soapbox][soapbox]