From Keel Middleton of Wellington, KS (a BNSF engineer), some BNSF news. Caution- this post is a long one. Santa Fe News BNSF & Other Railroads July & August 2003 Track & Traffic On July 15th, BNSF cut in the second section of the new track expansion on the Panhandle Sub. The new track between New Codman (Cut in on June 30th) and Lora was cut into service. The new track extends from what was the east end of the siding at Lora at MP 470.0 to Codman at MP 481.4 and is the new Main One except for the siding at Lora becoming the new Main two. To complete the task, the former siding at Lora has be re-laid with new 141 pound welded rail to upgrade it to main track status. Main two was the original main line through Lora and Miami and still has a 60 MPH permanent slow order and a 65 MPH permanent slow order between Miami and Codman due to curves. The new track has much broader curves and there are not any speed restrictions on it. What was the east end of the siding at Lora is now a 40 MPH turnout to Main two. The siding at Miami has been left in place for slower traffic to get run-around and is off of main two. The11,723 foot siding has a state highway crossing in the middle of it that was left in place, but a new underpass was built just to the east of it to allow most traffic to pass if a train is blocking the crossing. BNSF built the new crossing and is paving the road under it plus built a drainage system to allow water to get away. BNSF also tore down the old elevator at Miami and replaced it with Main 1. The former ATSF water well that was along the main line has been filled in and has main 1 running over it now. As of the end of July, the ATSF water tanks still stand at Miami. Rumor was that they too would be destroyed and replaced with a new water tower for the city of Miami to use. BNSF continues to work on the new roadbed sections for the next sections of new main track on the Panhandle sub that should be cut in this fall. Road bed is now in place from the west end of a 17 mile two main track section at Coburn at MP 438 to near the east end of Glazier at MP 443. Bridges and road bed work are continuing west from Glazier to the east end of the siding at Clear Creek at MP 449. The new track will be main two in this location and will leave the siding at Glazier in place on main one. New rail is in place along the siding at Clear Creek to up-grade it to the new main two when the time comes. > Road bed is also in place now moving about two miles west of the west end of Canadian along with bridges that will be the newMain 1. Signal gang material is on the ground and will be installed soon between Curtis and Woodward. Curtis is the west end of the current 13 mile section of two main tracks. The New "Fly-Under" at Amarillo is open for Business. The new track was put in service on July 8th, but not used for a while, as the directional running is not set up yet for crews between Amarillo and Pueblo. The new "Fly-Under" is part of the Boise City Sub main line extending from a point on the Red River Valley Sub Main 1 (Ex CRIP) now know as BC Jct. at MP 332.8 on the Red River Valley Sub and MP 0 on the new track and Dumas Jct. at MP 1 on the Boise City Sub. Also at Dumas Jct., the east and west legs of the wye take off to meet the Hereford sub. The east leg of the wye is what connects to the Hereford Sub at Eastern (MP 550.5) and the west leg is the old Boise City sub main line that connected to the Hereford sub at East Tower (MP 552.1). In addition to the new track, the West leg of the Wye (Old Boise City sub main line from MP 0 to MP 1) is now a CTC track, as is the former Rock Island Main line from the crossing at East Tower to BC Jct., a distance of 1.9 miles. > The Boise City sub main line (Fly Under) is also CTC controlled. All the new track and CTC is under the direction of the Panhandle West Dispatcher. The grade on the Fly under is 3.5% going east {geographically south) down from Dumas Jct. under the Hereford sub, then 08% back up to BC Jct. Other changes in the Boise City sub are a turnout change at Las Animas Jct. that makes the Boise City sub the straight or normal position of the turnout. Trains are now allowed to use it at 30 MPH instead of 20 MPH. The Restricted limits at Dumas have been eliminated as well raising that speed for Restricted speed (not exceeding 20 MPH) to 30 MPH through town. The speed on the short section of double track at Machovec that has spring switches has also been raised form 20 MPH on the switches to 30 MPH. A new north leg of the wye will be constructed at the ASARCO Spur just north of Amarillo to allow coal trains that use the Boise City line to reach the SWPS plant without going to Amarillo and turning. Those trains have all ran via the BNS line from Pueblo south to Amarillo then to the former ATSF line where they were headed the correct direction for entering the plant. Using the Boise City sub makes them heading the wrong way for this move. In addition to the feed trains from Eddyville, IA using needing to make a back up move in Amarillo to go from westbound on the former ATSF to westbound on the former BN, the empty coal trains from Kingsmill, TX will have to do the same thing for the directional running. BNSF had planned to put a new crossover in at East Tower in Amarillo to allow this move, but it is yet to be done. Although new ATSF searchlight signals have been mounted on a new Cantilever bridge at East tower for westbound trains, but are not in service yet. Track work is being done on the Pueblo sub to raise the speed limits there as well to allow the new Pueblo Run-through to work better. Crews from Denver and crews from La Junta will begin to run through Pueblo in the very near future making that run a total of 184.1 miles. Denver to Pueblo is 119.5 miles and Pueblo to La Junta is 64.6 miles. The speed on the Pueblo sub has been 40 and 50 MPH for quite some time. New rail and some new ties will allow for 55 MPH speed across this line. While I am not positive this is the first train, at least one loaded coal train has used the new fly under on July 17th. On that Thursday evening, train C-CRMIOG0-32A with BNSF SD70MACs 8953 and 9408 lead 118 cars under the Hereford sub with BNSF SD70MACs 9988 and 9981 as DPU on the rear of the train. The 16,608 ton train was 6560 feet with power and negotiated the new track with no problems. A La Junta Train crew was aboard the train as it ran to the former BN Eastern Street Fuel Facility in Amarillo for inspection and a crew change. Since July 20th, all the loaded coal trains destined for Smithers Lake, TX (SLP) and Iola, TX (IOG) have been routed via the Boise City sub so engineers can get qualified on the territory prior to the direction running start up. The directional running between Pueblo to Amarillo is currently scheduled to start on September 3rd. Engineers are supposed to get qualified prior to operating on the line, so some crews have been added to the freight pools and the engineers are riding with their brothers from the other towns over the opposite lines to get qualified. The Amarillo BN and Trinidad engineers are riding over the Boise City line while the Amarillo ATSF and La Junta engineers are to ride over the Dalhart & Twin Mountain subs. The jobs will be advertised out of La Junta for southbound trains and Amarillo for northbound trains. That means the crews that are now home terminal crews at Trinidad will have to move to La Junta or drive back and forth. By rail, this is 80.9 miles. The Trinidad crews have been offered a moving package by BNSF of $20,000 to telocate to La Junta. If they elect to drive, they will be allowed $71 per trip for three years, then nothing. If they elect to take the $71 and then elect to move later, that money already paid to them for driving will be deducted from the total moving package. Crews that work from Amarillo to Trinidad will be deadheaded via either taxi or train the 80.9 miles to La Junta. This means that either Amtrak or the one scheduled freight will have to be used if by trains as that is all that is scheduled out there now. In other directional running news, the BNSF has petitioned the Kansas City crews to run through Newton for no extra pay. Currently they start a new trip ticket if ran via Newton between either Kansas City and Wellington or Arkansas City. BNSF wants to eliminate the extra pay and has petitioned to do so. This will allow traffic between Emporia and Mulvane to operate on either the La Junta and Ark City subs or the Emporia subs. This way, BNSF sort of has two main tracks between these two cities without building anything extra. The Unions have asked for an arbitrator to handle the case and see if they can get a better deal. BNSF wants to increase traffic via the Ark City and La Junta subs to allow more trains to move without causing delays. This means that the City of Wichita will have more train traffic. In 1996, they tried very hard to keep the UP from running more trains via Wichita, as it would tie up the crossings for too long. BNSF and UP have reached an agreement with the City of Wichita to raise the tracks through downtown over several crossings to eliminate the traffic snarls. BNSF ran a special > train on July 30th for this track raising. BNSF began running a new coal train on July 22nd. Train C-GJCSUD0-01 departed Denver on the 22nd on its first trip over BNSF. The train originates on the Utah Railway at Wildcat, UT and is ran via the UP trackage Rights to Grand Junction, CO where BNSF gets it. From there, BNSF takes it via Denver, Alliance, & Lincoln, NE, Sioux City, IA and Wilmar & Northtown, MN to Superior, WI for the Detroit Edison Plant. The first train departed Denver with 4943, BN 9683, and BN 9410 with 105 loads weighing 14,457 tons. Crossing the Rockies, it had BN 9523, BNSF 8846 & BN 9658 cut in behind 81 cars as Distributed Power. While BNSF gained this train, it lost one to move coal to Omaha and Lincoln. Omaha Public Power District is switching from BNSF hauling it's coal to UP hauling coal. The five year contract will cost OPPD $245.7 million and will save them about $15 million in transportation costs. Part of the expense that BNSF has is that is must use the UP for five miles to reach the Omaha plant and pay UP for the trackage rights. To serve the plant in Nebraska City, BNSF must use OPPD's rails and pay a short line operator to take the trains there. While UP will have to pay the short line operator for the move to Nebraska> City, it will save on the move into the Omaha plant. BNSF (and predecessor BN) has served the Nebraska City plant since 1978 & the Omaha Plant since 1984. In January 2004, the locomotives will be yellow instead of orange to take coal to these two power plants. While the OPPD says that the fact that UP is headquartered in Omaha and BNSF is in Fort Worth, that had nothing to do with the fact they chose UP instead of BNSF. The board of directors says no political influence or favoritism was shown to pick the carrier and the mines to get the coal from. > BNSF still takes care of UPS better than any other customer. Three times in July, they ran a special train just for UPS to get their hot loads where they belonged on time. UPS was late loading at Albuquerque twice in July and the trailers would miss the Z-NBYWSP connection at Belen. In order to expedite the traffic, BNSF ran train Z-ABQWSP9 across the Northern Line to reach Kansas City ahead of the Z-NBYWSP8. The expedited hot shots were as follows. Z-ABQWSP9-16N with BNSF GP60M 104 & 6 cars on the 16th. Train Z-ABQWSP9-17N with BNSF 8610 & 3 cars on the 17th. This allowed the train to get a head start instead of going to Belen to meet the Z train that was already at Belen and since BNSF did not want to hold the Z-NBYWSP, they ran the specials via the Raton Pass line. Both made a good connection at Kansas City. Also on the 17th, the Z-NBYWSP9-17 had to set out a pair of three packs at Amarillo with bad order trailers (leaning). They were promptly fixed and moved to Willow Springs as a special train, the Z-AMAWSP9-17A with BNSF 514 for power on the 4 car train.
"BNSF still takes care of UPS better than any other customer. Three times in July, they ran a special train just for UPS to get their hot loads where they belonged on time. UPS was late loading at Albuquerque twice in July and the trailers would miss the Z-NBYWSP connection at Belen. In order to expedite the traffic, BNSF ran train Z-ABQWSP9 across the Northern Line to reach Kansas City ahead of the Z-NBYWSP8. The expedited hot shots were as follows. Z-ABQWSP9-16N with BNSF GP60M 104 & 6 cars on the 16th. Train Z-ABQWSP9-17N with BNSF 8610 & 3 cars on the 17th. This allowed the train to get a head start instead of going to Belen to meet the Z train that was already at Belen and since BNSF did not want to hold the Z-NBYWSP, they ran the specials via the Raton Pass line. Both made a good connection at Kansas City. Also on the 17th, the Z-NBYWSP9-17 had to set out a pair of three packs at Amarillo with bad order trailers (leaning). They were promptly fixed and moved to Willow Springs as a special train, the Z-AMAWSP9-17A with BNSF 514 for power on the 4 car train." That is customer service! And UPS moved business to UP?!?!? OTOH: I would have loved to have gotten a cab ride on one of those specials! 8610 is D8-40B I think and having ridden one of the D8-40BW's It could have been a rough ride if the track was not perfect.
