Western Railroad Discussion > Spokane Area Observations

There has been massive congestion on the BNSF around Spokane all day and night. Eastbounds have been stacked all the way from Hauser to Cheney the whole time. They even have had a eastbound stack train parked at Overlook all day.
Earlier this year BNSF had purged most of the leased hoppers from it's shuttle grain trains, once again making them mostly brown (except for some occasion BN hoppers or heritage cars). But in the past couple weeks I've been seeing trains of nearly all leased hoppers (AOK, NOKL, CBFX, ect). So BNSF added back capacity for the heavy grain traffic, which is contributing to the congestion.
UP is also doubling up empty grain trains now. I saw one head north through Cheney on Monday about 5:30pm.

PS; Hauser Yard area is on fiber optic cable and not covered by ATCS.

Ted Curphey
Ontario, OR



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 10/21/20 05:28 by funnelfan.

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That ATCS monitor is very cool. How do you get access to it?

The Chehalis webcam had their busiest day last week- 57 trains on Thursday, 10-15, despite a reduced Amtrak train count of 3, with no #11 Starlight.  The biggest part of that was 16 BNSF grain trains.    BNSF ran 38 trains- 5 G, 11 X= 16 grain trains, 8 H manifest (incl. 3 garbage), 2 Q intermodal, 2 coal, 3 U (2 oil, 1 pet coke), 2 S marine double stacks, 5 Yard jobs.  UP ran 16 trains- 1 grain, 2 manifest, 7 Intermodal (1 was a repo), 1 ZLCTM (more Zs than BNSF!), 2 garbage, 3 locals.

BNSF was saying all summer long there would be a big grain rush, yet they weren't prepared.

mapboy

Traffic has picked up to over 40 trains from midnight to midnight lately in the backyard. Lots of grain trains.

Larry

all-nite-junk-train Wrote:
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> That ATCS monitor is very cool. How do you get
> access to it?

Coverage can vary a lot, but here is the place to start;

https://groups.io/g/ATCSMonitor/

Ted Curphey
Ontario, OR

#MPID #Chernoybl

Has construction on the new bridge over the spokane river east of Yardley started yet? That was always a huge bottleneck, so I'm curious when that will get sorted (if they still plan to).

funnelfan Wrote:
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> There has been massive congestion on the BNSF
> around Spokane all day and night. Eastbounds have
> been stacked all the way from Hauser to Cheney the
> whole time. They even have had a eastbound stack
> train parked at Overlook all day.
> Earlier this year BNSF had purged most of the
> leased hoppers from it's shuttle grain trains,
> once again making them mostly brown (except for
> some occasion BN hoppers or heritage cars). But in
> the past couple weeks I've been seeing trains of
> nearly all leased hoppers (AOK, NOKL, CBFX, ect).
> So BNSF added back capacity for the heavy grain
> traffic, which is contributing to the congestion.
> UP is also doubling up empty grain trains now. I
> saw one head north through Cheney on Monday about
> 5:30pm.
>
> PS; Hauser Yard area is on fiber optic cable and
> not covered by ATCS.

zorz Wrote:
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> Has construction on the new bridge over the
> spokane river east of Yardley started yet? That
> was always a huge bottleneck, so I'm curious when
> that will get sorted (if they still plan to).

All that will do is make what is shown in the picture worse.

TAW

funnelfan Wrote:
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> There has been massive congestion on the BNSF
> around Spokane all day and night. Eastbounds have
> been stacked all the way from Hauser to Cheney the
> whole time. They even have had a eastbound stack
> train parked at Overlook all day.

Having had to prevent and/or fix several meltdowns, I can only wonder how many opposing trains and how many gandys and signal guys sat for how long while these trains rushed into oblivion.

TAW

They've graded the east approach, but doesn't look like much doing at the bridge itself - no indication of impending construction across the river.

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