Trains news wire 6-19 tells of Union Pacific moving through traffic over to their Donner Pass route. The importance of the Feather River route to BNSF was acknowledged in the article.
Anything is for sale at the right price. Would Union Pacific consider selling their Feather River route at a price BNSF may accept?
I don’t remember all the conditions imposed on the UP/SP merger (uh, takeover). But doesn’t the BNSF already have some kind of haulage/trackage rights on both the Feather River and Donner Pass routes?
There have always been some interesting trade-offs between those two routes: short distance vs. gentle grades, horrific snowfall vs. rockslides and washouts, etc. I think that there have been some clearance issues too.
The accountants jousting over maintenance and dispatching costs ought to be fun to watch in the meantime…
If UP moves all their traffic of the Feather River line, does that mean BNSF is expected to pay 100% of the maintenance and dispatching costs?
UP says closure rumors are untrue
I wasn’t aware BNSF used that route, I know its the old Western Pacific line but thought UP had quite a few trains there.
Remember— Its not nice to fool with mother nature. The two routes are separated enough that usually both lines are not affected by the same fierce winter storm (read lot of snow, water, landslides, wash outs,floods, etc). Over the years there have been constant detours over each of the routes. Remember the CZ detoured over the WP this past summer for maintenance.
Personnel is the main restriction of any realignment. If you were UP wouldn’t you keep all your T&E persons qualified on both routes in case of detrours? They already may be?
If there is a sudden increase in traffic wouldn’t a modified directional running operation could keep the lines fluid? After the traffic increases on the southern transcons UP and BNSF have had to scramble for years to increase capacity. Even with the traffic downturns CSX has had to live with its abandoment of the “S” line and B&O to STL and the overloading of adjacent lines just to give a couple examples.
Trainfan:
BNSF uses the Feather River Route as far east as Keddie, where it takes off on its own “High Line-Inside Gateway” (former Western Pacific) to Oregon and the Pacific Northwest. It’s a competitive north-south route to the UP (formerly SP) “Shasta Line”.
If UP transfers its major traffic to the Donner Pass/Overland Route, it will mean improving some clearances in the tunnels (probably by lowering the track somewhat instead of raising the tunnels, many of which are drilled through extremely hard Sierra granite) and re-installing some miles of double track between Emigrant Gap and the Summit at Norden, which were reduced to single track by the former owner, SP. I travel parallel Interstate 80 frequently between Sacramento and Reno, and so far I’ve not seen any evidence of the second track being re-laid, though UP seems to have increased the traffic somewhat over the line.
Donner Pass is a steeper route than the Feather River Canyon, with grades of up to 2.4% as opposed to the canyon’s 1%, but also more direct and not prone to rock-slides, as it is a ‘ridge’ route and not a canyon floor passage. The chief culprit on the Donner Pass route is the ‘snowbelt’ that begins at Blue Canyon (elevation 5000’) and continues to Truckee, on the other side of Donner Pass. The snowfall in that part of the Sierra can be extremely heavy, with depths of up to 25 feet during a bad winter. However, more modern snow-fighting equipment has reduced that particular problem considerably.
But I would certainly think that UP would keep the Feather River route between Keddie and Portola open as an alternate route over the Sierra.
Tom
Tom:
BNSF also has rights on the WP from Salt Lake City to Stockton as part of the SP-UP merger, but there isn’t a lot of traffic it solicits for that route. Public documents released last year showed an average of one BNSF train per week each way between SLC and Stockton.
Most tunnels are cleared by crown-cutting as in almost all cases it’s much, much, much less expensive than lowering the floor, especially when the tunnel is under traffic. Lowering the floor by any appreciable amount will usually require removal of the track, and that means the tunnel is going to be out of service for at least a day or two. Taking the track out of service means trains don’t run, and that’s absolutely fatal to the railway’s cash flow, service commitments, and network fluidity if it goes on for too long or for too many times. That’s why following a derailment the emphasis is on re-establishing train service immediately and very little finesse or TLC is given to the equipment that derailed or the track and signals that are damaged. Just jerk them out of the way as quickly as possible and lay track!
The harder the rock, the more attractive crown-cutting becomes, because it’s easy and cheap – the rock is self-supporting and incremental cuts can be taken without the requirement to resupport or reline at the end of each work window before trains can run again. There’s no problem cutting hard rock with modern tools, in fact, it’s usually easier to cut than soft rock because it doesn’t fall out in chunks and clog up the muck stream.
When a tunnel is lined, lowering the floor becomes even more problematic because the lining support is lost. Undermining the footers of the steel sets or timber sets is a good way to bring the tunnel down on top of you in a matter of a few hours. That’s happened in a few cases I know of, and it was disastrous.
Two other very difficult problems with lowering the floor is that now the drainage in the tunn
Railway man:
Thanks for the information on the tunnels. I was just going by what SP did to the original 1867 Summit Tunnel (now out of service) on Donner Pass quite a few years back–going in and lowering the floor because of the extreme hardness of the granite. Since the tunnel was also on the beginning of a down-grade, it didn’t affect the drainage.
I’m really not sure how many tunnels the UP is concerned with on the Donner Pass route–I know that there are about 32, but I don’t think there are that many clearance problems with most of them. And I have seen double-stackers running through between Roseville and Sparks, so what clearance problems exist, might be solely on the old, original (1867 or so) out-of-service westbound track between Norden, to the point where it joins the newer line midway down the Summit. I have heard that UP is considering putting that track back in operation, but I’ve heard that for some years, now.
However, the last time I was in Truckee, about a month ago, about six trains came through in the afternoon, so it’s pretty clear that UP is putting more and more traffic over ‘the Hill’ these days. I have heard that the goal is between 25-35 trains per day, so if the several sections of single track (Norden to Truckee, Emigrant Gap to the bridge near Cisco Grove) are re-laid to double, then the line could certainly handle it.
I grew up in Truckee, and when I was a kid, trains came through about every half-hour. THAT would be nice to see again, LOL!
Tom
RWM: What about the snow sheds? Are they tall enough or will something have to be done there? If they do have to enlarge tunnels would they first restore what portions of the second track parallel to the present track that UP considers critical including any enlargment of the second track tunnels and snow sheds first then do the track 1?
Does anyone know the pre-recession train count on both the SP and WP routes?
How has that changed during the past year? Based on the grades (single track?) of the SP, what is a realistic train count the line can handle?
ed
MP:
“The Hill” as the SP (now UP) mainline from Roseville to Sparks is called, was double-tracked in he early years of the 20th century. Between Roseville and Colfax, the two mains are non-parallel, but out of Colfax, up through the toughest part of the grade to Norden, the mains are parallel. At Norden, the original line goes up over Donner Pass while a lower level line tunnels through the crest near Donner Peak. The two lines meet again above Donner Lake, halfway down the summit, and continue on mostly parallel into Sparks, NV.
In the later years of SP operation, double track was removed from Emigrant Gap to Cisco Grove, a distance of about 15 miles, and the original track over Donner Summit was put out of service from Norden to Donner, leaving the newer tunnel route through the summit . I would think that about 20 total miles of line would have to be double-tracked again.
When UP bought SP, most of its trans-Sierra traffice was still being put through the single-track Feather River canyon (20-25 trains per dayj) and the remaining 10 or so trains per day was moving over the Donner Pass route. It was thought that the Donner Pass tunnels were too tight a fit for double-stackers, but evidently that is not the case, now that double-stacks are again moving over “The Hill” between Roseville and Sparks.
Snowshed height is not a problem on The Hill–what remains of the old SP snowsheds are concrete and have ample clearance.
As I see it, the advantage of The Hill over the Feather River Canyon is that despite more severe grades, the route is much shorter, and train speeds are not relegated to 25mph as they are in the canyon. Also, being a ‘ridge top’ route, The Hill is not plagued by the winter rock-slides in the Feather River Canyon. And as I said before, newer snow-fighting equipment
The Pass (at least one track) has been good for low-cube double-stacks since at least 1990; it’s the double hi-cubes that are the problem, and of course that’s where the market has been for a number of years. UP’s project includes putting back down 9.2 miles of second main track that was removed by SP.
Truckee is one of my favorite towns –
I’m looking for a public document that states what the plan is, but haven’t found one yet.
RWM
Wouldn’t you bet the UP wishes the SP had implemented the Kaiser Plan to reduce Donner-route length by 30 miles and the summit grade to 6,200 feet? “All” it would take would be 57.3 miles of tunnels.
Mark
Golly. Up until the 1948 repeal of the California Full Crew Law, up to 7 brakemen (and a minumum of 3, depending upon train size) were required on trains over Donner Pass. After 1948, “only” four or five were the norm.
Mark
Do you have a link to that idea? wouldn’t it be interesting to read it? Did it have enough clearance planned for the present double stacks and of course CAT?
See pages 156 and 157 (they include a map drawing) of John Signor’s Donner Pass, Southern Pacific’s Sierra Crossing. They didn’t have double stacks in 1945, so who knows?
Mark
Mark:
What’s also fascinating in that Signor book is the projected maps for the double-track had the non-parallel mainline extended past Colfax, as originally planned by Harriman. That new Eastbound trackage was all OVER the place, LOL! I believe the ruling eastbound grade was set at something around 1.5%.
Tom