From the last quarter of 2016 the BNSF main line has been overstretched for capacity. The situation can be monitored by following the progress (or not as the case may be) of the Empire Builders, which are regularly losing several hours between Montana and the coast. Exactly where the delays occur seems to vary, but local railroaders say that a critical problem is the capacity and layout of the refuelling station at Hauser, Idaho. Freight trains are parked miles either side trying to get in there, and often need recrewing because hours of service are exceeded. Abandonment of GN and SP&S lines are also implicated. (I believe this goes back to an SLSF manager who went there after their merger and implemented a slash and burn policy). The MRL has been told to refuel its trains in Helena.
To a foreigner this looks like a mess. But how does BNSF see it? Imagine there’s a scale of 1 to 10, where 10 is ‘This is totally unacceptable, heads must roll at a very senior level for allowing it to happen, we’ll spend whatever it takes to fix it, even though it’s not budgeted- go fix it Smythe Jnr’ and 1 is ‘There’s been a big grain harvest, happens every time this occurs. It’s winter. This is railroading, get over it. We’re not ploughing money into a problem that might not happen again. True costs are peanuts. Late delivery to priority intermodal customers? Let them eat cake. Amtrak? Who cares?’
Does anyone have any insight into the mind of a major Railroad board that might illuminate their position? How will BNSF management on the ground view it? Any predictions on what will happen? No axes to grind,
The brutal truth is the weather. Sub-zero weather(like -25 below/-50 below wind chill) force trains to run slower due to brittle rail and air braking loss. Even UP is fighting snow/cold issues on the Overland route. BNSF has been installing 2nd MT westward and it is now into Eastern Montana. And the traffic still is heavy in spite of our stale economy. When the weather gets this bad, everything slows down. We are seeing #8 arrive 7-8 hours late in St Paul. Back in the 60’s, I remember the Empire Builder and NCL 4-5 hours late, and they were not fighting the traffic volumes of today.
Amtrak - BNSF gets paid on performance, and makes less when the passenger train is late. But 7/8 are just one pair of trains; and even if on time, BNSF makes a lot more money on a pair of premium freight trains with UPS/FedEx traffic.
More to the point, why are they not addressing the capacity issue and where are all the folks that were extolling the benefits of ownership under Warren Buffet?
And yes, Wall Street knows this is an issue with BNSF.
They are addressing it according to several friends I have in that area but laying tracks in the mountains takes time. Also the biggest issue regardless on the HI-line is further to the west with the Cascade Tunnel short of reopening the first one there is no way in Hades your going to get a second main line thru that area.
Maybe a new route? Would be a refreshing sight to see an American Railroad build a large grade and curve reducing tunnel out West like CP did in Canada. American railroads have the money for such a project they just have never planned it.
Your wanting the BNSF to attempt a new grade reduction in Washington state where the Cascade tunnel is located in a National Forest. You would have a better chance of getting a Man on Pluto before the Enviromentilsts and NIMBY’s ever let that happen. That least reusing an old RR tunnel on old ROW the BNSF can say we are reclaiming what was ours and not upset them to much and get a double track segment they need.
To CMstPnP’s points, it will be interesting to see just what exactly BNSF is proposing to do to alleviate things. I would guess any serious doubling tracking would be prohibitively expensive at many places in the mountains, would think rather that debottlenecking in easier places around Spokane would be more practicable, and according to what I read more effective.
The capacity through the Cascade Tunnel is 28 trains per day as I understand it, and whilst the Builder does get stabbed there from time to time, presumably waiting out the 30 minutes restriction for fumes to clear after the previous train passes through, it generally does reasonably OK from Seattle to Spokane, so things seem not too bad there right now. And, the BNSF did reopen the Stampede pass as a relief valve, which is not used that much, I believe.
If capacity there is critical, given the restriction to 28 trains is due to the 30 minutes between trains requirement, might I make the suggestion (tongue in cheek) that it might be a good idea to have electrified helpers hauling eastbounds up the grade through the Tunnel? This would be an alternative to his and Shadow the cats owner’s suggestions, and surely much cheaper?
To JRBernier’s comments, interesting also that the NCL and Empire Builder suffered on account of the weather way back when. Rose coloured spectacles say they could deal with this kind of t
Number one choke point on “H-Line” Northern Transcon is Sadndpoint, ID . Single track over lake. About a three mile project. Three lines from west, two lines from east feed into a one-track bridge. Hence the name “The funnel”. Fixing it would be taking the cork out of a shaken champagne boote. It is a clog up. It is not an engineering quaqmire, nor a money quaqmire, but it is a legal quagmire. Everyone wants to sue everyone. there are Lots of salamander rights groups.
West of Spokane isn’t much of a problem. What is the problem is getting from Sandpoint to Spokane and v.v. East of Hauser it is mostly single-track with sidings. Throw in long heavy trains with slow speed turnouts to the sidings and you have a recipe for congestion. The Cascade Tunnel is not really the problem.
To CMstPnP’s points, it will be interesting to see just what exactly BNSF is proposing to do to alleviate things. I would guess any serious doubling tracking would be prohibitively expensive at many places in the mountains, would think rather that debottlenecking in easier places around Spokane would be more practicable, and according to what I read more effective.
The capacity through the Cascade Tunnel is 28 trains per day as I understand it, and whilst the Builder does get stabbed there from time to time, presumably waiting out the 30 minutes restriction for fumes to clear after the previous train passes through, it generally does reasonably OK from Seattle to Spokane, so things seem not too bad there right now. And, the BNSF did reopen the Stampede pass as a relief valve, which is not used that much, I believe.
If capacity there is critical, given the restriction to 28 trains is due to the 30 minutes between trains requirement, might I make the suggestion (tongue in cheek) that it might be a good idea to have electrified helpers hauling eastbounds up the grade through the Tunnel? This would be an alternative to his and Shadow the cats owner’s suggestions, and surely much cheaper?
To JRBernier’s comments, interesting also that the NCL and Empire Builder suffered on account of the weather way back when. Rose coloured spectacles say they could de
I’m surprised a local (Bruce Kelly) hasn’t stepped in here, as this subject has been covered before.
Due to the above mentioned line abandonments, the ‘funnel’ between Spokane and Sandpoint is a major bottleneck. Besides the Hauser fueling rack deficiencies, there are still several single track sections that could (and should IMO) be upgraded first (see map link http://goo.gl/maps/zUryP ).
The trackage adjacent to the downtown Spokane Yardley yard looks odd to me - no proper leads off of the mains? To the east, the city of Spokane Valley is preparing to grade separate two streets and presumably any rail bridges will be at least two tracks.
Another track (and bridge) over the Spokane River is needed; interestingly, there appears to be abutments for a former bridge north of the existing one (history, please). Hopefully this will not be impeded by the local nut jobs who want to ‘stop all fossil fuel trains’.
Due to budget cutbacks the eleven mile 2MT upgrade between Rathdrum and Athol was put on hold. When construction season starts we’ll look for a change in status.
As if the aging single track Lake Pend Oreille bridge wasn’t enough, several sidings just RR east of the bridge are unbonded - makes for slow and challenging meets.
Reportedly two thirds of the Northern Transcon traffic originates / terminates in the Portland area, therefore the Cascade Tunnel isn’t as much of an issue. If traffic doesn’t fall off significantly, the Lakeside sub west of Spokane should get some single track mileage reduced.
The tunnel is seven miles long. That’s on the order of 15 million cubic feet, I would guesstimate. To completely flush the tunnel in 30 minutes thus means moving almost half a million cubic feet of air per minute (in comparison, your home HVAC probably moves less than 100CFM). They don’t completely clear the tunnel, from what I can see. They just bring it down to tolerable levels. The fans are powered by 800 HP electric motors…
Perhaps a couple of fans on the exhaust end would speed the clearing. I would opine that the only other option would likely be a vertical vent (or several) along the tunnel, or a parallel tunnel. I have no idea what that would involve, other than a lot of rock drilling. And likely getting past the folks who would object to the initial work, as well as the equipment necessary to make it operate. Either way, is the payback worth the cost?
BNSF’s Iron Triangle traffic pattern sends most westbounds down through the Columbia River Gorge and sends eastbounds over Stevens or Stampede. While Stampede is not cleared for double stacks, oil and grain empties use it. It is far from capacity. The Cascades are NOT a problem.
Sandpoint is the real issue. It is called The Funnel for a reason.
I’m looking out my back window across a snowy landscape to the west end of Hauser Yard as I write this. Monitoring the drama on the radio as well. There’s so much I could say, but so little time. So just a few quick points.
A detailed and reasonably current view of the track layout between Sandpoint and the western approaches to Spokane can be seen here:
Note that the full view of Hauser Yard and its refueling facility comes a couple of pages after the page showing the dual main line running past Hauser.
Note also that the route is NOT mostly single track with sidings east of Hauser as was previously posted. Roughly half of the 40+- miles between Rathdrum (were 2MT from Otis Orchards, WA, ends) and Sandpoint Jct is 2MT. The only single-track sections are Rathdrum-Athol (with Ramsey siding near the middle), Cocolalla to West Algoma (narrow shoreline along Lake Cocolalla) and of course the long bridge over Lake Pend Oreille.
As for Cascade Tunnel, that’s been discussed to death, including here:
The physical constraints to BNSF in this region are obvious to anyone who looks closely at maps, track charts, etc. Ignoring the mountain grade challenges in the WA Cascades and MT Rockies, here’s what else to consider: Nearly 20 miles of mostly single track that’s limited to 30mph running along the twisting Kootenai River on the MT/ID border. Single-track choke points at Lake Pend Oreille, Lake Cocolalla, Athol-Ramsey, Ramsey-Rathdrum, Otis Orchards-Irvin. And to a lesser degree, the single-track Latah Creek bridge on Spokane’s west side, where westbounds headed to Pasco or Wenatchee often stack up through downtown waiting when there’s an eastbound fleet appro
H-m-m-m-m, Mount Macdonald tunnel is 9 miles long and I don’t remember seeing trains waiting for exhaust fumes to clear…now lets examine how it ventilates and compare it to the cheap assed BNSF solution, which causes a capacity problem with the BNSF tunnel…
"The Mount Macdonald Tunnel Ventilation System allowed a major increase in the volume of traffic over Canada’s t The NOVA Award was presented to the Mount Macdonald Tunnel Ventilation System for innovation in purging long tunnels of diesel locomotive heat and gases. The Connaught Tunnel had been the Canadian Pacific Railroad’s main route through the Canadian Rockies since 1916. By the late 1980’s, however, the tunnel’s steep approaches and single track created a serious bottleneck. The decision to construct a new tunnel for westbound trains required overcoming a major obstacle: purging such a tunnel, up to nine miles long, of the heat and gases generated by trains with up to six locomotives pulling 110 heavily-loaded cars uphill. Conventional tunnel ventilation systems could not clear a tunnel fast enough to allow an economically viable flow of traffic. To answer the challenge, Sam Levy and Norman Danziger of Parsons, Brinckerhoff, Quade and Douglas segmented the tunnel into two parts to ventilate the segments separately, with a ventilation shaft near mid-tunnel. A series of gates, at this shaft and the eastern entrance, and five fans are operated by computers at Canadian Pacific Rail offices on the West Coast. When a train enters the tunnel, the eastern segment is closed and ventilated. As the train reaches mid-tunnel, the central gate opens for it to pass into the western segment, then closes when it has passed. While the train traverses the western segment, air in the eastern segment is cleaned. After the train exits, the western segment is purged. By this time, the eastern section can receive the next train. The Mount Macdonald Tunnel Ventilation System has enabled Canadian Pacific Rail to increase the volume
If trains are waiting 30 min at each end for the exhaust to clear the ventilation system is probably pretty old. Drilling more ventilation and segmenting the tunnel not sure that would be all that expensive with drilling technology today but your not going to get BNSF managers to do that unless they are really begging for capacity…they will stack trains before they spend the money. Which isn’t all that efficient but seems to be the MO of railroads these days when faced with a capacity problem. Stack trains, slow the frieght, to hell with the customer and stockholder.