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‘Southwest Chief’ allies rally after legislative defeat
Will be interesting to see if BNSF does the same thing it did in North Dakota where once the state and Amtrak stepped up to fund improvements in the Devil’s Lake line, it decided to start routing so many freights on the line that the Empire Builder almost couldn’t get through, let alone keep an on-time schedule.
How do you justify maintaining hundreds of miles of 79 MPH mainline track to haul the daily equivalent of 1 757’s worth (or maybe 4 or 5 motor coaches-worth) of passengers in each direction???
Once upgraded with CWR instead of jointed rail, maintenance should be relatively light. No heavy freights to beat up the track!
Your 757 doesn’t make intermediate stops. Anyone who has taken a multi-day bus ride knows how miserable that can be compared with the space on a train, with room to walk around.
As much as I am in favor of trains, this cost is way too much for two trains a day.
Amtrak needs to at least explore the possibility of rerouting the Chief through Amarillo in case funding to preserve the current route doesn’t come through. Throughway busses between Denver and Albuquerque (or Belen, depending on routing) could connect with both the Chief and the Zephyr and provide service intermediate areas. Other throughway services could connect Dallas-Ft. Worth with Amarillo. I don’t want passengers to have to overnight on a bus but using it to extend the train’s reach adds to ridership and potentially reduces the need for subsidy.
If it were a highway its zealful funding would not even be newsworthy.
Perhaps there’s a better solution: extend Rail Runer over Raton Pass. This will bring with it track improvements, station improvements, and give the Raton Pass line a reason to exist.
Another solution would be to have BNSF reroute a few long-haul freights via Raton to ease congestion on the Transcon.
Former New Mexican governor Bill Richardson did put up the money to purchase the passenger main to the Colorado stateline. As soon as Gov. Susana Martinez look office ,she scuttled the project and gave BNSF their money back.
Dennis said, “Will be interesting to see if BNSF does the same thing it did in North Dakota where once the state and Amtrak stepped up to fund improvements in the Devil’s Lake line.”
Don’t sweat it Dennis. The Raton Pass line will not see freight traffic again due to its horrible profile (3.5 percent grades). Amtrak and state and federal entities only paid for about 2/3 of the cost of raising the track between Churchs Ferry and Devils Lake. BNSF paid for the rest and paid for all the other improvements, such as adding or extending about a dozen sidings between Fargo and Minot via Devils Lake, and installing CTC at all the control points of those sidings. By the end of this year, the entire Fargo-Minot route used by the Empire Builder will be CTC, and BNSF is also planning to add a connecting track at Grand Forks which will raise the speed of trains between the Hillsboro and Devils Lake subdivisions from 10 to 30 MPH.
Jim said, “If it were a highway its zealful funding would not even be newsworthy.”
It might be if the highway was 270 miles long, costs millions per year to maintain, carried only 400 people per day on a good day, and had no defined funding source in perpetuity.
the Southwest Chief NEEDS to switch to the Southern Transcon. This is not North Dakota.
Ok…so where are the Boy Scouts of America sleeping??? There is substantial BSA traffic to Philmont Scout Ranch at Cimmaron via Raton. Oh, well, they can take buses all the way from Chicago and other national cities
I feel as NM RESIDENT ,NM is not a friendly state for passenger Rail Traffic . The NM rail runner could go from El Paso to Santa Fe . Right now it only from Belen to Santa fe and state says not enough passengers and is studying to sell it . So I doubt Raton pass tracks are really high on states government list .