I picked up a box of railroad magazines at a swap meet yesterday and one magazine (Railroads Illustrated) has an article on North Dakota (March 2009) entitled “North Dakota, The Land of Grain, where Coal is King”. Granted things have changed significantly in the past 4 years.
Has BNSF improved capacity on their lines thru the region? Which line sees the movement of oil? BNSF is fortunate to have 2 mainlines thru the state.
Are both lines (ex NP and GN) heavily utilized these days? Is one used primarily for coal (ex NP thru Glendive Mt) while the other is an oil route? What about intermodal traffic?
How has big oil changed operations in ND? I talked to a BNSF manager a couple of weeks ago who has responsibility for coal movements to Superior and he indicated coal is gradually coming back in volume and BNSF is running on average 7-10 oil trains per day. That takes quite a bit of capacity. How has BNSF managed the opportunity?
Coal moves across the ex-NP route via Bismark to Fargo and on to Superior on the ex-NP line. That track capacity has been there before the slow-down of traffic.
The unit oil trains are generated on the ex-GN line and move from the Williston area to Minot and Fargo(via New Rockford). This is up to 11 trains of crude east, and of course 11 empty trains west back to the oil fields.
On the ex-CB&Q line from the Twin Cities to the Chicago area, this has resulted in new traffic as well and an upgrade to the North La Crosse terminal infrastructure to handle this new traffic. I have the ATCS monitor loaded on my laptop(with the BNSF La Crosse radio feed). Viewing the amount of traffic moving over this single track CTC/Double track ABS line is impressive.
JRBernier is correct, the ex-NP line (on which I live) is still mainly coal, but more diversified than it used to be, partly to take pressure off the High Line. We also get oil traffic, stack trains, a whole lot of grain (thanks to all the new “super elevators”), a hot daily UPS train and mixed freight.
When we moved up here 40 years ago, the ex-NP had been relegated to basically a coal branch, with “grain in season,” as they used to say. Not very interesting train-watching. All different now.
LION live right on MP mane lion. Him makes no counts. Him cannot sit still ten minutes, you want him to sit there for 1440 minutes you is out of your caboose.
