Western Railroad Discussion > Marias Pass What If

What if BNSF routed all their trains off of the MRL and Southern Transcon to the Hi Line sub, MRL has 30 a day, Southern Transcon has 100+ a day, Hi Line has 40-60 a day.  100+60+30 total of 190 trains this would double traffic over Marias. (Hi line sub is half double track)Talk about a huge lawn chair show at the Izaak Walton Inn. Would be a sight to see watching monster stack trains going over Marias. It is just an What if?



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 04/07/20 15:27 by jayman.

Might not get 30 more trains a day through Flathead Tunner or east of Spokane.
RB

MRL gets paid even if no trains go thru, mind as well let them work for it

1) MRL is guaranteed XX-number of cars per fiscal quarter. They'd be laughing to the bank.

2) Not enough track capacity.

3) Those trains that would have to use the Great Falls Sub south of Shelby would not go anywhere fast. Dark territory, limited siding capacity.
Dave in Missoula



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 04/07/20 15:47 by monaddave.

up833 Wrote:
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> Might not get 30 more trains a day through
> Flathead Tunner or east of Spokane.
> RB

great point..........

66

Are you including the 100 trains a day in the southern transcon in you count of 190?  

Yes 100 on Southern Transcon, 40-50 on Hi Line, 30 on MRL.

Tunnels between Laurel and Great Falls do not clear double stacks or 737 loads.

The export coal trains from the Bull Mountain mine north of Billings did operate via the Hiline for a few years, but they have now operated via MRL for some time.  BSB

jayman Wrote:
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> What if BNSF routed all their trains off of the
> MRL and Southern Transcon to the Hi Line sub,

Krebs and Washington got in a battle over that in the early 90s. No BNSF trains over MRL. It cratered BN operation between Laurel and Shelby plus south of Laurel and west of Shelby. Mossmain - Shelby is a turkeyh trail...or maybe it would be improved were it a turkey trail. I was working Great Falls cutting in TSS (the Santa Fe Information System) at the time.It was quite a show.

Meanwhile, Washington was laughing all the way to the bank collecting money for trains he wasn't running.

Was it ego on Krebs' part or ignorance? Don't know, but it was mmmm...interesting to watch (since I had no responsibility for any of it).

TAW

jayman Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> What if BNSF routed all their trains off of the
> MRL and Southern Transcon to the Hi Line sub, MRL
> has 30 a day, Southern Transcon has 100+ a day, Hi
> Line has 40-60 a day.  100+60+30 total of 190
> trains this would double traffic over Marias. (Hi
> line sub is half double track)Talk about a huge
> lawn chair show at the Izaak Walton Inn. Would be
> a sight to see watching monster stack trains going
> over Marias. It is just an What if?

You sound like the highly-educated people who recommended this to senior BN management with little or no understanding of the capacity limitations on the “HiLine” and the massive capital improvements needed between Laurel and Shelby to lift the status of that line to something greater than “wooden axle.” These folks simply saw the expense of two helper districts on the former NP and got their way. Seasoned railroaders? Hardly. At the time BN was run by a CEO who, according to Krebs (who ran Santa Fe at the time) knew nothing about running a railroad.

I would imagine Dennis Washington wants to thank these people (and the BN top-level executives) who believed all of it and helped create MRL.

I heard from a BNSF official that Rob Krebs once said, in frustration, “I’m tired of us putting fuel every month in Dennis Washington’s jet...”

When he said that, Denny had a Gulfstream IV. Now he has a 737 and I understand they don’t get very good mileage.

Posted from iPhone



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 04/07/20 16:44 by Alco251.

up833 Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Might not get 30 more trains a day through
> Flathead Tunner or east of Spokane.
> RB

EXACTLY the problem, just like Cascade Tunnel

Alco251 Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> jayman Wrote:
> --------------------------------------------------
> -----
> > What if BNSF routed all their trains off of the
> > MRL and Southern Transcon to the Hi Line sub,
> MRL
> > has 30 a day, Southern Transcon has 100+ a day,
> Hi
> > Line has 40-60 a day.  100+60+30 total of 190
> > trains this would double traffic over Marias.
> (Hi
> > line sub is half double track)Talk about a huge
> > lawn chair show at the Izaak Walton Inn. Would
> be
> > a sight to see watching monster stack trains
> going
> > over Marias. It is just an What if?
>
> You sound like the highly-educated people who
> recommended this to senior BN management with
> little or no understanding of the capacity
> limitations on the “HiLine” and the massive
> capital improvements needed between Laurel and
> Shelby to lift the status of that line to
> something greater than “wooden axle.” These
> folks simply saw the expense of two helper
> districts on the former NP and got their way.
> Seasoned railroaders? Hardly. At the time BN was
> run by a CEO who, according to Krebs (who ran
> Santa Fe at the time) knew nothing about running a
> railroad.
>
> I would imagine Dennis Washington wants to thank
> these people (and the BN top-level executives) who
> believed all of it and helped create MRL.
>
> I heard from a BNSF official that Rob Krebs once
> said, in frustration, “I’m tired of us putting
> fuel every month in Dennis Washington’s
> jet...”
>
> When he said that, Denny had a Gulfstream IV. Now
> he has a 737 and I understand they don’t get
> very good mileage.
>
> Posted from iPhone
All I said was what if. Im not familliar with the Great Falls line, but it is intresting to know more about it.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 04/07/20 17:36 by jayman.

jayman Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> What if BNSF routed all their trains off of the
> MRL and Southern Transcon to the Hi Line sub, MRL
> has 30 a day, Southern Transcon has 100+ a day, Hi
> Line has 40-60 a day.  100+60+30 total of 190
> trains this would double traffic over Marias. (Hi
> line sub is half double track)Talk about a huge
> lawn chair show at the Izaak Walton Inn. Would be
> a sight to see watching monster stack trains going
> over Marias. It is just an What if?

Here is a rule of thumb capacity study.

Single track capacity is limited by the longest running time segment of single track (between sidings or multiple track). That is the Capacity Limiting Segment (CLS)

Full (Theoretical) Capacity (TCap) is (1440 minutes per day)  / (CLS Running Time).

That throughput is not possible. Practical Capacity (PCap) (the most that can be handled reliably) is half of TCap (on a single track railroad).

If the Hi Line is handling 60 trains a day (and doing so reliably), the CLS Running Time is about 12 minutes. That doesn't sound reasonable, but there have been a lot of changes since I worked on the capacity of that line.

You're asking about 190 trains a day. That would need CLS Running Time of five minutes. Not only would that require substantial construction in general, the Bad Rock Canyon, Flatead Tunnel, and Kootenai Canyon would present the need for some stretches of Entirely New Railroad.

Of course, whatever CLS Running Time the Hi Line needs, the same is needed between Shelby and Laurel, so that needs almost an entirely new railroad.

Then there is the little problem of Hauser and Spokane would need to be able to handle a train every five minutes (a LOT of infrastructure). Given 20 trains via Wenatchee, Pasco only has to handle a train every 8 1/2 minutes (which would also require more than a lot of infrastructure).

Once all of that is in place, BNSF would need

• greater dispatching skill,
• greater scheduling skill,
• greater discipline in operation,
• more reliable trains.

Summary: Never happen in your wildest dreams.

TAW

 

Alco251 Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------

> You sound like the highly-educated people who
> recommended this to senior BN management with
> little or no understanding of the capacity
> limitations on the “HiLine” and the massive
> capital improvements needed between Laurel and
> Shelby to lift the status of that line to
> something greater than “wooden axle.” These
> folks simply saw the expense of two helper
> districts on the former NP and got their way.
> Seasoned railroaders? Hardly. At the time BN was
> run by a CEO who, according to Krebs (who ran
> Santa Fe at the time) knew nothing about running a
> railroad.

That occurred under Krebs, not his predecessor, about whom, I assume, the comment was made.

Having worked for that guy and several of his predecessors as well as Krebs, I don't agree with that assessment.

TAW

In his book, Krebs briefly discusses this, and the reasons for the MRL.  I read somewhere on TO that Krebs was not happy that Washington
would not return what is the MRL to BNSF because of the guaranteed profit.  He also said running trains over the MRL cost BNSF more than
what BNSF would have to spend themselves.  

With the limits on the Flathead and Cascade Tunnels, I can't see traffic routed off the Southern Transcon.  And to what purpose???  LA/Long Beach is
a far bigger port than Seattle/Tacoma.  That's why 100 trains go across the Southern Transcon every day.  

Nick Tharalson,
Marion, IA

ntharalson Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> In his book, Krebs briefly discusses this, and the
> reasons for the MRL.

If I remember correctly, a substantial reason for MRL and WC was that Washington and Temple were buddies of Menk and were made sweetheart deals. Both scored big. The excuse (vs the reason) was that BN was never going to need either ever again.

That was the era of setting up the ill-fated Winona Bridge Railroad to run non-union "trackage rights" trains on BN tracks and quit running BN trains. That didn't work out too well either.

TAW

Given the present cost of future earnings of the MRL when Krebs wanted to buy MRL back it would cost BNSF more money than what BN paid to purchase the ATSF. No BOD is ever going to make that decision.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 04/09/20 11:21 by fbe.

TAW Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> ntharalson Wrote:
> --------------------------------------------------
> -----
> > In his book, Krebs briefly discusses this, and
> the
> > reasons for the MRL.
>
> If I remember correctly, a substantial reason for
> MRL and WC was that Washington and Temple were
> buddies of Menk and were made sweetheart deals.
> Both scored big. The excuse (vs the reason) was
> that BN was never going to need either ever
> again.
>
> That was the era of setting up the ill-fated
> Winona Bridge Railroad to run non-union "trackage
> rights" trains on BN tracks and quit running BN
> trains. That didn't work out too well either.
>
> TAW

IIRC, MRL came about after Menk retired from the railroad and his protoge Dick Grayson was also gone.  Krebs claimed the then BN management had a big beef going with the unions at the 
time and this was a way they could stick it to them.  As I recall, right after the MRL start up, there was a major derailment on Bozeman Pass supposedly caused by disgruntled union types.
I do remember the Winona Bridge stuff but I also believe that was post-Menk.  

Nick Tharalson,
Marion, IA

It was Dick Bressler/Darius Gaskins, not Menk.  The MRL was a way to take a lower use line and force the two man crew consist operation on it.  When the unions balked at an agreement within BN, Bressler/Gaskins went to Washington and offered the route on a long term lease.  It was not because BN thought they'd never need it - they just didn't need it as much as the Hi-Line so they thought they could reduce cost.  That was 1988, before any coal went to Roberts Bank from the PRB, oil trains from ND to the PNW and fewer grain unit trains from Nebraska/SD to the PNW.  

Same time period as the SP&S decision - not enough traffic to support two full main lines in both corridors.  Since nobody saw the PRB coal or oil going west at that time, it made some sense.  Of course anybody can look back today and say what a dumb decision...but I will challenge anybody that says that to tell me what is going to be running in 10 years on any major corridor in the US and then stake millions of dollars on that prediction.  

The Winona Bridge was the logical extension of the MRL.  Once the MRL was successful, Bressler wanted to extend the concept of two man crews to the Hi-Line.  As I recall, the courts stepped in on that one and said that was not like leasing a secondary parallel line (the NP) so BN couldn't do that.  So it was ki-boshed.

No way would the MRL be valued at $4.2 billion, which is what BN paid for ATSF.  And it was Krebs that tried to reroute the traffic to the Hi-Line without talking with his contract people to find out that the contract was guaranteed based on quarterly car counts.  If he really said anything about the former BN people not knowing about running a RR, he needed to look hard in the mirror first.



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 04/09/20 11:41 by HomerBedloe.

ntharalson Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------

>
> IIRC, MRL came about after Menk retired from the
> railroad and his protoge Dick Grayson was also
> gone. 

Maybe I don't remember the Good Ol' Boys Connection right, but Good Ol' Boys Club connection is what we inmates heard at the time.


> Krebs claimed the then BN management had a
> big beef going with the unions at the 
> time and this was a way they could stick it to
> them.  As I recall, right after the MRL start up,
> there was a major derailment on Bozeman Pass
> supposedly caused by disgruntled union types.

...is what they claimed but never proved.

However, it was the era of It's all for sale with the labor thing to be applied to anything they couldn't sell. Labor trouble on what became MRL started with the sale, not before.

There was a big one on MRL caused by the indiscrimiinate use of teletype/computer printers to eliminate operators. Unattended printers were spewing lists, message traffic, and track warrants. If one ran out of paper or jammed, someone would eventually come along and fix it. All of the rules for secure handling of train orders (track warrants by that time) were out the window. They existed, but we were instructed to ignore them; those were the "old ways" and a track warrant is not a train order, so train order rules don't apply anyway. (among the early instances of me not being a "team player")

Those were the days when we caught the BN dispatcher school telling students that when they got to the dispatchers offices to go to work to ignore the old guys and their old ways and just do as we have taught you (which caused a new dispatcher in Seattle to set up a Big Fat Lap, virtual collision, in much the same way that the Motley Meet was set up by a dispatcher school graduate in 1984 except they didn't find each other the single track part of the run). The school was telling them that we were all burned out and didn't know what we were doing.

Back on MRL, a dispatcher stuck out a track warrant clearance for 197 well in advance of on duty time. Meanwhile, the printer ran out of paper and nothing was printing...and there was nobody there to see that nothing was printing. Some time later, closer to on duty time, a track inspector stuck out a 10 mph restriction. Instructions were to issue the new track warrant and leave it to the crew to question why they got two. Meanwhile, the crew comes to work, someone fixed the printer for them, and the printer started spewing the backlog of traffic. When it gets to the original track warrant for 197, they took it and went on their way. They were long gone by the time that the second one printed. They went through the 10 mph defect at 60 and littered the landscape with non-upright railroad equipment. They blamed that one on the crew "who should have waited for the second track warrant (that they didn't know was coming) and the dispatcher "who should have known" that the printer wasn't working (finding out from the guy who didn't work there any more, I presume).

> I do remember the Winona Bridge stuff but I also
> believe that was post-Menk.  

It was.

TAW