Western Railroad Discussion > BNSF Northern Transcon Reroutes

Just heard from a BNSF buddy in Alliance to now expect reroutes from the northern transcon over the coal lines and MRL, anywhere from 5 to 15 per day. He said stacks and autos will be among these. I'm sure manifests too. Apparently, its due to the crush of crude oil traffic they are having up in the Dakotas right now.

Combined with an enormous amount of track work, double tracking, siding extensions, with the attendant work trains and slow orders, plus trying to work off the grain backlog from the late harvest last year that hit right when the worst of a very bad winter hit, plus the immediate need to get fertilizer out during the next few weeks. They really do need to "spread the pain".

It may have already started as I saw an eastbound stack train with international boxes on Sunday evening here in Sheridan, WY. We do not see many of those unless they are detours or reroutes.

Paul Birkholz
Sheridan, WY

See very few stack trains going through the Twin Cities these days. Still have the former Z trains which are now Q trains. I did see a few vehicle trains yesterday go past my house. The Staples Subdivision has been a parking lot many days over the past 6 months. The increasing number of crude oil trains out of North Dakota along with limited capacity and crew shortages has led to gridlocks across the Dakotas, Minnesota through the twin cities, and through to Chicago. Hopefully once much of the track work in North Dakota is done, the stacks will return here as I am sure missing seeing all the containers. Much more entertaining to watch than oil trains.

They are running more and more stacks, autos, oil, manifest, etc. on the Ottumwa Sub more than I have ever seen before. Galesburg is totally out of Engineers for all subs that they have been holding trains until they have a rested crew. It is a total mess to say the least.

Encountered two westbound stack trains with marine containers on the Creston Sub in about 2 hours yesterday. Have also noticed a new vehicle train on the sub in the last month or so.

Has the Portland priority business ( UPS/ltl/ etc) moved over to UP as a result of all this?

When I videotaped along the Ottumwa sub west of Burlington, Iowa last October, the reroutes off the Hi Line were averaging around two each way per day and consisted of manifests (HPASGAL and HGALPAS but not every day), stack trains with international containers, and bare table trains.
Dick Eisfeller
Big "E" Productions

I would imagine the Creston Sub can't get tricky with those stretches of single track.

Already detouring some of the CSX oil empties from Philadelphia PA by way of St. Louis, then up the K-Line to the Ottumwa/Creston Subs.

Posted from iPhone

kalthoff Wrote:
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> Has the Portland priority business ( UPS/ltl/ etc)
> moved over to UP as a result of all this?

Nothing noticeable seems to have been lost on the BNSF. The UPS biz that doesn't have a weekend buffer (service is based on what UPS uses for their customers, xx number of "business days" which doesn't count weekends and holidays), is trucked between Spokane and Portland. Twice a week there's a ZSPOSTP and ZSTPSTO run with mostly only UPS business for Seattle, Portland, and Spokane. If there is a weekend cushion in the trip, they'll just use the Q-trains. The rest of the business (ie JB Hunt, Snider, LTL, etc) just use the Q-trains.