Burlington Northern was officially formed on March 2,1970 from the merger of the Great Northern,Northern Pacific,Chicago Burlington & Quincy,and Spokane Portland & Seattle railways(altho the SP&S was only leased until around 1980,it was technically absorbed into the new system in 1970).Freight and passenger operations did not “Officially” start until 12:01am on March 3,even tho the former GN/CBQ No. 97(the West Coaster) and the combined Afternoon Zephyr/Empire Builder/North Coast Limited both left Chicago on March 2 with new BN GP38’s 2072 thru 2077 and repainted E8’s 9942 and 9943,respectively.All other operations continued as per the predecessors schedules.
At 12:01am March 3,transcontinental freights were rerouted in the Twin Cities via the ex-NP line to Staples,Minnesota and Fargo,N.D. to the ex-GN’s Surrey cutoff at Casselton,N.D.,over the ex-GN mainline to Sandpoint,Idaho where the ex-NP main was used to Spokane where the trains either went via the former GN,NP,or SP&S routes depending on their destinations(Seattle,Pasco/Tacoma,or Portland).Eastbounds used the reverse routing.
The first major mainline relocation completed under the Burlington Northern name was the former GN between Stryker and Jennings Montana via the 6.83 mile long Flathead tunnel due to the building of Libby dam on the Kootenai River and formation of Lake Koocanusa begun in 1966 and completed in November 1970.With this line relocation,the mainline was shortened by about 60 miles and BN was able to ‘finalize’ the transcontinental schedules that same month.
More schedule changes were carried out in June of 1971 and changes to the physical plant were begun.BN 97 no longer stopped at Hillyard,north of Spokane,due to it’s routing over the former NP mainline from Sandpoint.CB&Q switchers working Dayton’s Bluff in the Twin Cities were serviced at Northtown yard,and mainline power soon would no longer be seen at Minneapolis Junction(formerly GN’s Twin Cities roundhouse).
I do have a couple of questions reguarding BN operations after the merger.
1.When was the Minneapolis passenger station closed and the track between the stone arch bridge and the former GN Willmar mainline torn up.I noticed on the satelite image of Minneapolis on Google maps that there was a leg of the wye on the GN bridge crossing the Mississippi between Minneapolis Junction and N First St.
2.The GN had originally planned to bypass Spokane to the north(I remember reading about this in Charles Wood’s book on the GN published by PFM).Wouldn’t that original alignment,tho never graded,have been a better route for intermodal and grain trains,than the Latah Jct line thru Spokane?
The connection between the GN and the NP at Sandpoint was only an interchange track for cars, it could not be used by trains except at a snails’ pace.
It was the fall of 1970 before an upgraded connecting track was completed at Sandpoint to allow trains off the GN to enter the NP.
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The first major mainline relocation completed under the Burlington Northern name was the former GN between Stryker and Jennings Montana via the 6.83 mile long Flathead tunnel due to the building of Libby dam on the Kootenai River and formation of Lake Koocanusa begun in 1966 and completed in November 1970.With this line relocation,the mainline was shortened by about 60 miles and BN was able to ‘finalize’ the transcontinental schedules that same month.
Yes, it would. Of course, I am assuming a route along the Little Spokane River to it’s confluence with the Spokane River, then across the Spokane River and up the canyon of Deep Creek to the present route west of Fairchild Air Force Base, that such a route would have had easy grades down to the Spokane River and then back up to the Columbia Plateau. Surely such a route would have been a more succinct fit to JJ Hill’s claims of having (via GN) “the best profile of any” PNW trancon, than the convaluted routing via Hillyard, Havermale Island (crossing the river thrice in the process), Browns Addition, another crossing of the Spokane River via a high bridge, then hugging the cliffside while attaining the flatlands of the Columbia Plateau. There was a lot of superfluous up and down 1% grades for the chosen route, not to mention street crossings aplomb, but then again free land for the ROW through Spokane must have counted for more than a logical alignment and 15 fewer route miles.[;)]
What “traffic”? Most of the industries GN served were located in the NE part of the area, not Spokane proper, and came later, indicating they located where the railroad was available. It is likely that, if GN had gone the logical route previously discussed, those particular industries would have been located on that line along the Little Spokane River as well. Not to mention the fact that you don’t need a run through line to actually serve a city, when a simple branchline will suffice. Milwaukee did just fine using branchlines to serve cities like Spokane and Butte.
Hmmm, come to think of it, didn’t GN serve Butte and other cities via branchlines as well?[;)]
All the free ROW in the world didn’t make up for the fact that GN’s eventual routing through Spokane was an expensive construction project, as well as being costly to maintain over the years, and was slow running.
Improving GN’s main line through Spokane would have had little benefit to grain in the long run. Halfway between the BN and BNSF mergers, someone got smart and quit sending loaded grain trains west via Cascade Tunnel/Stevens Pass. Whether it comes to Sandpoint off the GN or the NP, BNSF’s loaded unit grain all leaves Spokane on the NP to Pasco (not forgetting that little bit of SP&S the first few miles), then the SP&S down the Columbia, avoiding the steep climb over the Cascades.
Yes, but GN went dumb 20 years prior to the creation of BN when they ended their electric operations over Stevens Pass, and this decision was not quite ameliorated by the BN and subsequent routing of all grain trains down the Gorge. The electrified operations allowed grain trains aplomb over Stevens to the Puget Sound ports, but once the diesels took over the heavy trains became an operating nightmare, hence the deference to the Gorge circa 1970’s. Even then, those grain trains bound for the Puget Sound ports have to take the long way around now (causing capacity problems in the Gorge), and are fighting 1.5% grades between Longview and Olympia.
Check the timetable. Napavine Hill is just under 1% both ways and it only affects traffic to Tacoma and Seattle which is less than half on BNSF’s PNW export grain.
A 72-mile electric zone played havoc with locomotive utilization once dieselization was completed. Most of the electrics (all but the W-1’s) were obsolescent and were in need of replacement. Since electric locomotives at that time tended to be custom orders, they would be more expensive than comparable diesel horsepower and would be confined to a 72-mile electric zone. Comparable diesel horsepower would be able to run through between St. Paul and Seattle.
I want to thank those who have contributed information to this topic thus far.
John Beaulieu for the info and reminders about the Sandpoint connecting track and the CB&Q switchers being serviced at Mississippi St shops.And others for information about the former GN Minneapolis passenger line via the stone arch bridge.
Now for what I’m looking for.I’m trying to find Official Guides for February,March and November 1970 and locomotive maintenance assignments for the NP and CB&Q prior to the merger.I have searched the usual suspects and came away empty handed.I have one for the NP dated 1966 here somewhere,but it doesn’t list specific unit numbers as the GN assignment sheet does.
Next question.How where operations changeovers carried out during the first 2 years of Burlington Northern.Especially before the Sandpoint connecting track was built.
Also,how rapidly was renumbering of the locomotives accomplished and when was renumbering done(i.e.:during scheduled inspections/maintenance)?I also know that repainting was done at Hillyard and Dale St in St.Paul,where else was this done?
The Burlington Northern was too overly staffed by CB&Q old heads.It would have been better off with personnel from the GN(especially trained in the ways of Jim Hill)to make a more profitable and outgoing entity.I could see closing some duplicate facilities,depots,and the like,but chasing off customers?Hill would have been furious!The only way the BN would have done better was to make sure the territory it served prospered more!Get people involved that were more taught in the ways of running a railroad,not some off-the-wall,desk jockey who has no idea what railroads are about.What this country needs is some good ol’fashioned Jim Hill head knocking to wake up these so called executives of today.Blast this era of politically correct,you-can’t do that muttenheads!America has too many thin skins n’ numbskulls!
If GN electrics were hauling grain via Stevens, were the trains 110 cars long like they are today? If not, then they had inefficiencies similar to what caused BN to quit running grain there. I’ve seen little written history on GN grain operations, but I’d guess train lengths of 50 to 70 cars at best, needing to spend time swapping diesels for electrics on BOTH sides of the mountain. BN had to cut its monster trains in half, cut helpers in and out, etc. One positive of the electrics comes to mind; there would have been no need to hold following trains while blowers purge the tunnel of diesel exhaust as is done today.
“If GN electrics were hauling grain via Stevens, were the trains 110 cars long like they are today? If not, then they had inefficiencies similar to what caused BN to quit running grain there. I’ve seen little written history on GN grain operations, but I’d guess train lengths of 50 to 70 cars at best, needing to spend time swapping diesels for electrics on BOTH sides of the mountain. BN had to cut its monster trains in half, cut helpers in and out, etc. One positive of the electrics comes to mind; there would have been no need to hold following trains while blowers purge the tunnel of diesel exhaust as is done today.”
Good point. Another thing to consider: Were there even grain trains back prior to 1956 when the electrification was discontinued? Definitely not unit trains as there are today. And even if you had, for the sake of argument, a 110-car train back then, it would not be the nearly 16,000-ton monstrosity that is run today…prior to 1956 most grain was handled in box cars. A 40’ box car with grain was about 68 tons, IIRC. Electrification would not change what the drawbar limits would be behind the locomotives: today 4800 or 6000 tons depending on the types of couplers. Even with an electric operation, a train today would have to have multiple helper units, a large amount of distributed power, or taken in three chunks over the hill…much more cumbersome and expensive than the water level route along the Columbia River. The grade over Napavine northbound is, as a matter of fact, .9 percent, not 1.5.
So why would you limit a new electrification to 72 miles? String it up from Seattle to Wenatchee, which I suppose is the nominal crew district. Trains have to stop for crew change anyway, so you’re not adding much more time by changing out diesels for electrics and vis versa. And if BNSF could convince itself to borrow the innovations from the “inferior” Milwaukee and it’s electric operations, they could utilize the electric-diesel synchronous controller concept, and then they could just add the electrics at the head end, keeping the DPU pushers on the back end.
Using the Milwaukee’s Diesel Synchronous Controller concept, an electrification from Wenatchee to Seattle would not any cumbersome operations to achieve the goal of sending heavy trains over the hill instead of throught the Gorge. Currently, BNSF runs their grain shuttles with one or two power units at the head end and one or two DPU’s at the tail end. Thus, instead of changing out diesel for electric and vis versa with electrification, you simply would add an electric at the head end and possibly a DPU electric to the DPU diesels at the pusher end. Then you use the combined hp to run up the 2.2% at jackrabbit speed to the east portal of the tunnel, wherein the electrics go into regenerative braking while the diesels go into dynamics. You wouldn’t need any midtrain helpers since the westbound uphills have no reverse curves, and distributed power keeps drawbar strain on an even keel. On the return trip all the diesels have to do is to drift while the electrics do all the work, so there’s no need to have to clean out the tunnel everytime. And eastbound double stacks can probably be handled by two or three electrics, so added diesels drift as well. The point is, most of the heavy tonnage will be moving east to west, which is where you want both electrics and diesels working together for max hp. Eastbound is just a matter of keeping the diesels in drift mode. And you can do it all with just one head end crew, trained for combined electric-diesel operations between Seattle and Wenatchee.
“You wouldn’t need any midtrain helpers since the westbound uphills have no reverse curves, and distributed power keeps drawbar strain on an even keel.”
Not with a 16,000-ton train. As I stated earlier, the drawbar limit is 6000 tons with grade e couplers. The train size limit is 9600 tons with distributed power per the current special instructions. This has nothing to do with the type of power that is pulling or pushing the train, simply what the drawbars can handle. Even electrics can only take 9600 tons.
Since there are three units one these trains, and I assume they are SD70 of C44-9 units which can handle 2,000 tons each up the 2.2 percent grade. This leaves 10000 tons or 5000 each for the two electric locomotives. I know electric freight motors are somewhat of a rarity, but what make and model would take 5000 tons up this grade, and like a “jackrabbit”, even if the train didn’t break in 2?
According to John F.Strauss,Jr in his book Great Northern Pictorial Volume 7,the Burlington Northern initially ran grain trains of 54 cars totalling 7,000 tons.What power was used on these trains? Were they routed over the Cascades or via Pasco to Portland?