CP + KC merger - how's it going?

Trains Magazine
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Greetings everyone. Back in late October, my wife and I did a weekend stay in the Guttenberg, IA area. The CPKC line runs right through that area, hugging the west side of the Mississippi River. The line is all single track (with some passing sidings). Some observations and comments from that weekend:

  • With LOTS of curves on this line, it is quite slow going. The line hugs the river bluffs along much of the way. At one point, we were pacing along side of a train going south. They were only doing 25 mph. Granted, it was an oil train so maybe there is a certain speed limit for those trains. (Not sure why, but the BNSF line on the opposite side of the river doesn’t have the space constrictions and is mostly high speed double track.)

  • Regarding proposed mergers, we always hear the sales pitch - ‘we will take xxx number of trucks off the roads’. Yes, that can occur with manifest traffic, but I would think the real truck numbers would be from the presence of intermodal traffic. Every train we saw was either oil or manifest. Didn’t see a single intermodal train. Perhaps they only run them at night in this area, not sure.

  • It won’t take a PHD to figure out that this line will NEVER be double-tracked. In addition to the narrow allowance along the Mississippi, there are several ‘cut and fills’ and sizable bridges on the line between Ottumwa, IA and Polo, MO.

Hear me out here, I’m not against mergers. Just wondering how much the world will benefit from this one. Maybe it’s too early to ask the question. As I observed the merger map, this line is the ONLY connection between the prior CP and KC roads.

Side question - I know this line combines/merges/? with the UP Spine Line in Polo, MO. I think it is double track then all the way south to Kansas City. Does anyone know if this is a ‘jointly owned’ line, or is it 2 separately owned lines that lay next to each other?

Mark

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Anything can be fixed with enough dollars thrown at it when it comes to engineering and construction issues. CPKCS is still getting everything integrated into one system give them time. Remember this the Santa Fe started the permitting process to double track Abo Canyon in the late 80s they knew then it was a bottleneck. It took until 2011 to get it double tracked.

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It has only taken CSX (and its predecessors) 135 years to get the Howard Street Tunnel up to double-stack clearance dimensions.

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I think UP still owns one of the tracks from Polo to the KC area. CPKC dispatches the line. UP’s ownership is through acquisition of the CNW who bought the RI’s portion of the joint line.

CPKC is installing CTC on portions that were formerly dark (unsignalled) territory between The Muscatine area and Polo.

From railfan reports/pictures/videos, there is an intermodal that runs over the exMILW and intermodal that runs in manifest trains. I don’t know if the IM train runs to Chicago or the Twin Cities.

Jeff

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There is plenty of room for double track along the KC - Twin Cities route. I think if you check further North, BNSF is single track, curvy and not all that fast and CPKC is double track and fast.

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True Balt but remember that the Belen cutoff wasn’t even built until 1908 and they still used Raton and Glorietta passes through WW2 as a freight route. It was when intermodal really took off in the 80s that it became a bottleneck and they started looking at getting the permission to do it. Problem was that it’s got endangered and threatened species in that area namely long tailed Mexican bat gila monster and sevrtal more. So they had to tread carefully.

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BNSF and CPKC operate joint two main tracks from St. Croix Tower (across the Mississippi River from Hastings, Minnesota) to CPKC’s St. Paul Yard, around 15 miles.

Between Savanna, Illinois and St. Croix Tower, CPKC is all single track except for about six miles of two main tracks from the east end of the Vermillion River bridge to Hastings.

Between Savanna, Illinois and St. Croix Tower, BNSF is all 2 MT CTC except for single track segments:

Galena to Portage, .6 miles, bridge over the Galena River

Ports to Crawford, 1.4 miles, bridge over the Wisconsin River

East Winona to Winona Jct., 2.5 miles

Trevino to Mears, .8 miles, bridge over the Chippewa River

Prescott to Burns, .2 miles, bridge over the St. Croix River

That’s a total of 5.5 miles of single track out of the 260.5 miles of 2 MT CTC between Savanna and St. Croix Tower.

In other words, BNSF has less single track than CPKC has two main track.

Both railroads have speed restrictions through communities, yards, and at the beginning and end of segments of 2 MT CTC. The speed limit on BNSF is 60 MPH. From River Jct. to St. Croix Tower, CPKC hosts Amtrak, so the top speed is 79 MPH, with numerous sections of 65 MPH maximum.

When considering the route from Kansas City to the Twin Cities on BNSF via Galesburg, the only significant segment that isn’t 2 MT CTC is from Galesburg to Savanna about 96 miles.

When considering the route from Kansas City to the Twin Cities on CPKC, the only significant two main tracks segment is from Moseby Jct. to Polo, 25 miles, joint with UP.

So where is, “BNSF is single track, curvy and not all that fast and CPKC is double track and fast?”

1 Like
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Well, lets go back to the main point of the discussion first. CPKC has a slower route in Iowa vs BNSF across the river. My response was basically up river I don’t think that is the case. Your making the same basic point, why split hairs? You read like one of those sports stats guys that has all the sports stats of every player on the field memorized.

I forgot the Soo single tracked the former Milwaukee Road North of La Crosse and I think they added upgraded signaling…which I suspect is also more modern than what BNSF has in place. I would venture to say from observation that the CPKC has higher operational efficiency on the upgraded single track than the former Milwaukee had with the double track…which is why they removed the double track.

I have no clue off the top of my head where BNSF Is single tracked in Western Wisconsin (I don’t memorize that stuff as I view that as generally useless info) and I am not going to spend any time on it. I have seen the videos on YouTube though of the single track and curvy so I would suspect you did not use Google Gemini for your specs above on BNSF track in Western Wisconsin. I am still interpreting it as a legit question though because maybe you might not know.

Did you correct the other guy on space for double track in Iowa for CPKC if needed? I am just opining here I don’t submit for GIS or FRA review on my posts.

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Dismissing Vermontan’s factual information as “useless” and “nitpicking” because one’s own post is inaccurate is not helpful in a discussion.

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No, my point is that BNSF is much faster and much greater capacity. “Across the River” includes Savanna or Sabula to La Crosse or River Jct. where CPKC is much slower, is dark territory, and relatively few sidings. And yes, every once in awhile, facts are used to prove a point.

Your “suspect” is wrong. Again. The Soo Line did single track most of the railroad between Milwaukee and St. Croix in the 1990s, leaving some sections of two main tracks and long sidings. The Milwaukee did studies about singletracking the line back as far as the late 1950s. As the frequency of passenger trains declined, the amount of freight traffic wasn’t there to justify a double track railroad, but the Milwaukee was cash poor, and the cost (according to multiple studies) to keep the double track in place was less than expense of installing CTC, power switches, and new crossovers.

During the same time, Burlington Northern north/west from Savanna was pretty much the same: Double track except for CTC single track segments. But where the former Milwaukee was converted from double track to mostly single track, the BNSF line north/west from Savanna retained its second main, but was upgraded from double track to 2 MT CTC. Also, an additional main track was added at La Crosse (Grand Crossing), and over a dozen sets of double crossovers (all CTC with power switches) were added.

So, to recap, between Savanna/Sabula and St. Croix Tower we have:

CPKC: 159 miles of TWC single track (dark territory) between Sabula Jct. and River Jct. (La Crosse) with sidings 20 to 25 miles apart; then single track CTC between River Jct. and St. Croix Tower except for the aforementioned short segment of 2 MT CTC at Hastings.

BNSF: All 2 MT CTC with multiple multiple crossovers, except for the aforementioned 5.5 miles of single track CTC.

Your statement of “more modern” signaling for CPKC is vague. But from a purely factual point of view, BNSF’s signaling and track upgrades happened more recently, and provide a railroad which can handle significantly more traffic significantly faster.

4 Likes
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I never disagreed with that. It’s faster North of La Crosse which you and I both also pointed out. So basically you spent a lot of time arguing over point of no real argument on the basic response. I view that as arguing just to argue.

Normally, I would not dispute something like this but this is rather common in these discussion forums by a very small part of the posters here. Someone makes a point and another picks it apart even though both are in general agreement.

I fully understand why some feel the need to do that publicly, just do not see the need in a casual discussion about Trains.

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No. We don’t agree. You said; “I think if you check further North, BNSF is single track, curvy and not all that fast and CPKC is double track and fast.”

I have shown that your statement is patently untrue.

You have yet to specify WHERE BNSF is single track and CPKC is doubletrack. (There isn’t anyplace, but you have the burden to clarify…)

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You just reinforced my last point above.

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Children, Children, Children

Employee Timetables please!

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Vermontan already gave a lot of detailed info by location, likely from an employee TT.

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I think you need to clarify what the argument is first. Which wasn’t really done. I see the argument morphing on the other side without my participation. Played that game enough in this Forum and I don’t think it is a good use of my time, personally. I know a few enjoy that presentation approach. I think it speaks more to railroaders / railfans being bad with the general public.

The comment in the original post being responded to was that the poster did not see how CPKC could compete in the KC to Twin Cities Corridor because the track was slow speed in Iowa. I mentioned it is faster upstream because CPKC track was faster than BNSF, I mentioned the double track (we covered that), mentioned the single track (we covered that). That leaves the curvy track…which would be line profile stuff which I am not sure you will ever get for both sides very easily. It’s also not really that important to me either.

Track capacity, number of trains I think are ancillary issues because the point was never really compete with intermodal in Twin Cities - KC corridor which is also pretty vague. It was also mentioned there was no space for CPKC to expand it’s track to double track but it certainly looks like that might not be an issue via Google…not sure what an employee timetable would do there. This comment was ignored by the other side.

There is no argument CPKC has less trains and there is no argument that CPKC needs to compete in Twin Cities to KC corridor. There is no argument the track South of La Crosse needs improvement along the Mississippi and down to KC. I never contested any of that at least I don’t think I did. Anyways, that is how I see it.

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CMStPnP, this is the statement you made that Vermontanan disagrees with.

Because, as he demonstrated, there is basically NOWHERE where BNSF is single track and CPKC is double track.

I don’t believe there is any significant difference in curviness or speeds, given that they both follow the same damn river.

The BNSF signaling north of Savanna was upgraded in the 2013 - 2015 range. In part this was to accommodate a surge in traffic (largely crude-by-rail moving from North Dakota to the East Coast). It was also helped along by the fact that a huge amount of signal equipment had to be replaced for PTC, so the marginal cost of making capacity improvements was lower than it normally would have been.

One other quick note: BNSF does not have an intermodal service between Kansas City and the Twin Cities, but carload traffic between these two cities mostly goes on a different route via Willmar, MN and Sioux City, IA.

Dan

(BNSF employee speaking only for myself)

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Exactly.

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How much traffic has been poached off each carrier to their competition?

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Doesn’t UP’s “Spine Line” figure into the Twin City-KC competition?