Is stampede pass open now? I know BNSF reopened it in 1996 but I heard rumors of it closing in 2009…
It has been in service since the re opening but traffic has been minimal. 4 years ago they were doing maybe 4 or 6 trains a day. The last two years has seen very few trains with the tracks being idle for months at a time.
The line itself is in excellent shape. A good portion of it has concrete ties. They have recently started running grain trains on the line again but how often that happens is anyones guess. They want to start running container trains on the line but the tunnel would need to be notched or the floor cut.
railroadforums.com has many people from the Pacific Northwest on their site and they even have a forum called “Stampede pass diary” where people give daily updates on the status of the Stampede pass line.
I know prior to the economic downturn it was booming and Washington was seeing capacity constraints. So much so that people were talking about retracking Snoqualmie and other improbable scenarios.
I’m sure Stampede was hardest hit with the downturn compared to Stevens and the Gorge.
Yes that was true. I think Stampede pass is in better shape than Stevens pass overall. One of the major problems with Stampede pass is the tunnel is brick lined. Trying to notch that old brick (which is three feet thick) usually results in large chunks breaking off and leaving gaping holes in the lining which must be repaired. If the brick is in bad shape then they would probably have to remove all of it and re-line it in concrete.
I know that Stevens has already been at capacity many times in the last couple of years. It takes around 15-20 minutes to clear the tunnel from the fumes. So it is a major bottleneck.