A story regarding a study of re-laying rail on a route that has reverted back to nature. One can only hope. Will The Lackawana Cut Off see the light of day?
http://www.keepmecurrent.com/Government/story.cfm?storyID=34701
A study only means that somebody is willing to put up some money to find out if the whole concept is even feasible. The study could confirm that the line was abandoned 25 years ago for a very good reason and restoring service is economically unfeasible.
I need to have somebody give me money to do studys like this .
The Washington State DOT has an ongoing plan for rebuilding the Ellensburg to Lind portion of the old Miwaukee PCE as a new cutoff for BNSF. BNSF seems hesitant to endorse the idea even though it would be a subsidized capacity expansion. Their resistance could be as follows:
- Although the 2.2% grade up the Saddle Mountians is no great hindrance, the PCE bridge over the Columbia at this point is prone to high winds. BNSF would probably only use this cut-off for intermodals (maybe some eastbound coal and grain empties as well), so the wind tunnel effect would be a cause for concern. I don’t know if there’s a way that the State could mitigate the wind concern - maybe a covering on the bridge with wind deflectors?[%-)]
- With all such public projects comes the desire for public good, and the state rail plan includes caveats for increasing rail competition. UP might want to use publicly funded rail capacity for it’s own Puget Sound bound trains, and the last thing BNSF wants is for UP to get access over the Cascades via an historical BNSF corridor.
- There is a Plan B the state is considering that might be a better fit - using the Milwaukee PCE ROW only from Ellensburg to the west bank of the Columbia opposite Beverly, then rebuilding the old Hanford branch to the Tri-Cities. This has several advantages to BNSF, mainly that it continues to allow them to utilize the Pasco yard enroute. It also allows for a bypass of the Yakima River Canyon, where posted speeds are sometimes as low as 10 mph if I remember correctly. Currently there are two crew districts required between Auburn and the Tri-Cities, but this cut-off may allow enough of an increase in transit speed to eliminate one crew district (although I think to do so would also require a new Stampede Pass tunnel at a lower elevation than the current tunnel and/or a rebuild of the PCE Snoqualmie Pass line
And how does the state of Washington propose to pay for all of this?
Sell itself to California?
Mostly by gouging truckers and motorists, per the usual.
You can read it for yourself on the WSDOT website:
Will study for CASH!!
LC
The PCE will not be rebuilt under any circumstances. At the mere hint of construction, the Sierra Club and other like minded folk will begin massive litigation to stop the process. Sure there were trains there 25 years ago, but what about the affects on the enviroment today? We need to study this for at least 25 years more. Case in point - DME. They wanted to construct new track in an area of the country not known for scenic highlights and it has been 9 years since the inception of that project. Not a tie has been laid. The Bitteroots are absolutely gorgeous mountains! Some people will start to cry in the fetal position at the thought of any rail related construction in that area, whether it is on old ROW or new.
That being said I hope the project is a success. Ever the pessimistic optimist.
The Bitterroots are in Montana and Idaho rather than Washington state. The Washington State DOT study will not effect that range.
There has just bee too much encroachment and “progress” since the rail was pulled up to allow reconstruction at this point. Communities have used the row for housing subdivisions, bridges are gone, roadbeds have washed away. While it is possible to restore the row the delays and costs would prove prohibitive.
This should be a lesson to what happens to a transportation asset which is abandoned and later found to be of potential use.
I don’t know of too many businesses who will mothball and hold inactive assets indefinitely, incurring the expenses related to their upkeep, pending a possible use in the future.
Ergo the concept and application of railbanking to reduce the costs or mothballing the asset. Railroads seem to be willing to do that in some circumstances until the price of scrap steel gets high enough to become a revenue source.
The Milwaukee’s Pacific coast extension, the Delaware Lackawanna & Western’s Main line, (all of it west of Dover NJ) and the Lehigh Valley’s main west of Sayre are all gone, never to return. Sorry, rail lines that are abandoned stay that way.
What about the NP line over Stampede pass?
Not quite. The DL&W main in PA is operated by Genessee Valley Transportations Delaware Lackawanna RR and is in public hands. North of Scranton the former DL&W main is part of Canadian Pacific’s D&H Railway and even a stub exists west of Binghamton as the NS Vestal Spur. West of Vestal the old DL&W is largely part of the ROW of NYS 17, soon to become I-86. As to the Lehigh Valley the freight main extends west of Sayre as far ass the former site of Van Etten Junction, NY and the passenger main to Ithaca, NY, both part of the NS Ithaca Secondary Track. There are a few short segments operated by short lines west of that point.
As through routes these lines are probably finished west of the Binghamton or Scranton area. There is currently a fairly advanced plan to rebuild the Lackawanna Cutoff which might actually happen in my lifetime.
LC
Never say never.
Examples of abandoned or embargoed lines that have returned from the grave or are proposed to return from the grave:
- GN, Jennings MT to Wolf Creek (USACE reroute)
- UP, Thornton WA to Oaksdale WA (State of WA)
- CSP, Orofino ID to Jaype ID (BG&CM)
- CSP, Culdesac ID to Cottonwood ID (BG&CM)
- NP, Auburn WA to Ellensburg (BNSF)
- Milw, Ellensburg to Lind (STate of WA)
- GN, Bonners FY ID to Moyie Falls (UP nee SI)
- Milw, Beverly to Hanford (State of WA)
- etc
TRAINS had a news item a while back about a UP line that was reborn as a new secondary mainline.
The point is, some old abandoned railroad ROW’s have good enough alignment and profile that they fit into future plans for rail capacity expansion. That’s one of the reasons behind the rails to trails thing. It’s easier to relay ballast, ties, and rails over previously graded ground than to grade a new line from scratch.
It would feel like a miracle if the PCE Snoqualmie right of way got rails again, but I hope that it gets done too.
But for an example of how weird the protests can get, look at the hassle that BNSF is getting for just trying to finish the double-tracking of its transcon main by laying a second track in Abo Canyon, NM. It’ll go through, but only after the company wastes a bunch of money defending itself.
Come to think of it, how did the Sierra Club miss that new third track working its way up Cajon Pass in California? Oh, the horror of it all!
I don’t know but you sure gave me a good laugh!
Dave----
Plan “B” works as a by-pass for the Yakima Canyon and grade-crossing elimination project between Yakima and Pasco. It even gives the UP access into Seattle over the mountains but I doubt that UP would want to take advantage of it. Their congestion problem is between Pendleton and Hinkle - they either need a new railroad or double tracking BADLY. Grade reduction would help, also.
The driving reason for relaying track between Ellensburg and Lind is to eliminate the clog that the Cascade Tunnel on the GN creates. Extending the relay on to Plummer would create a Spokane by-pass route. I would think that with all the delays that the UP incurrs between Latah Jct and East on the joint BN-UP track through Spokane, they would be interested in this. And, I think that the BN would be, also.
Dave — do you know??? Where does the eastbound grade up the Green River begin to require helpers? Where helpers in steam days were placed on the train would be a good clue, but I don’t know that information.
As I understand it, this Hanford Branch alternative would be more expensive than building a series of short-cut tunnels in the Yakima River Canyon and mitigating the most egregious crossings via grade separations/closing some crossings/consolidating some crossings/etc. And that’s without my addendum of mitigating the 2.2% up to Boylston from Beverly by starting the Boylston grade south of the gap near Vernita.
Just eyeballing the atlas, it looks like you could have 5 or 6 one mile (give or take) tunnels at various points in the canyon to mitigate the 10 mph curvature, thus getting speeds up to the nominal speed for that line (40 mph?). That’s probaby cheaper than re-laying the PCE from Ellensburg to Beverly, a new bypass around Ellensburg, and re-aligning/relaying the Hanford Branch to the Tri-Cities (the map of the Hanford Branch makes it look like it had the alignment of a logging branch!). The Yakima Canyon tunnel series would also reduce overall mileage by about 15 miles, again just from eyeballing the atlas.
That being said, if indeed the State was willing to pay for it, then the Hanford Branch reroute (inclusive of a new grade from Vernita to Boylston) does have some advantages over the current Yakima Valley route -
- It runs through undeveloped/unpopulated land, so no eminent domain issues seem forthcoming, very few road crossings to worry about.
- It is slighly shorter than the Yakima Canyon route even with the tunnel shortcuts I proposed.
- It would jive with a concurrent rebuild of the Beverly to Lind section.
- It does allow a potential opportunity for UP and others to access this corridor (more on that below).
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It even gives the UP access into Seattle over the mountains but I doubt t