Santa
Fe News
BNSF
and Other Railroads
November & December 2004
At 06:20 on the morning of November 25th, BNSF suffered a head
on collision on the Montana Division near Conkelley, MT approximately 10 miles
east of Whitefish. The two trains
were the Z-PTLCHC9-24 and the H-NTWPAS1-23.
Early reports were that the CTC Signal system was out and a
miscommunication between the dispatcher and the signal maintainer lining signals
in the field occurred. With both
trains getting stop and proceed signals, they were moving at restricted speed
and the impact was not too great. It
did derail three of the four engines of the Z train and the lead set of trucks
of the head five pack, and all three engines on the H train plus four head cars.
Two of the derailed cars slid down the Flathead River embankment, but did
not foul the river. They were
loaded with feed and grain products. The
locomotives for the Z train were BNSF 5221, 5356, NS 9810, and BNSF 5106.
Power for the H train was BNSF 5087, 4119 & ATSF 609.
The only injury was the engineer on the Z train reporting a sore back.
The single main track was back in service the next night at 16:05.
Some Service interruptions are not as severe as a train wreck or cars
derailing or even hitting an auto. On
Thanksgiving afternoon at Fargo, OK, train G-EDYDHT5-22 suffered a failure in
the siding that cost this train two hours delay.
As the train departed Tangier, OK at MP 394, the link to the DP unit,
BNSF 972, dropped causing the train to only be able to move slowly into the
siding at Fargo at MP 399. The
engineer on this train had to walk back to the rear of the train to see what the
problem was, but fortunately, a local railfan came along and provided
transportation back to the rear of the 6,000 foot – 14,400 ton train.
The breaker had tripped for some reason on the BNSF 972 knocking off the
DP link. Since that engine was
tripping the breaker, it was decided to link the 1038 to the head end.
Both were already on the rear of the train.
The 1038 had a computer fault that would not let it link so it was back
to the 972. In the mean time, this
all caused an air brake computer fault on the head end of the train that had to
be cleared before any DP link could be established.
All said and done, it was two hours of delay for the grain train
re-linking the DP units, running an air test and waiting on traffic.
Thankfully the railfan came along when he did, or I would have been there
longer walking the train. (Thanks
Bill!)
This service interruption was a little unusual also.
At 23:50 on November 26th, Amtrak train #7, the Empire Builder
was delayed in Coon Creek, MN for 47 minutes coupling air hoses, running an air
test and removing debris. The
debris came from a snow blower that someone had left in the middle of the
tracks.
Another Thanksgiving Day interruption was at Watson, CA at 03:05.
The crew on the G-GALWAT7-17 was spotting the loaded ethanol train at the
Watson Ethanol plant. The crew
reported that they had derailed three tank cars with two of the cars ending up
on their sides. The crew had split
a switch which had previously been ran through and not protected.
No ethanol was spilled which is real fortunate.
On November 28th, BNSF suffered a coal train derailment near
Ottumwa, IA. Train C-ATMCXE0-62 had
42 cars of coal derailed at lines 34 through 75 in the train.
The 19:50 Pm derailment blocked both main tracks and spilled coal onto a
parallel county road. Main 1 was
returned to service the next evening at 18:35 and main 2 at noon on the 30th.
Many detours and parked trains were due to this incident.
At 15:24 on December 1st, Amtrak #3 operating on BNSF tracks
on the Chicago Sub west of Cicero yard (Ex BN) in Chicago hit a truck on the
tracks. Initial reports were that
two men were stealing auto parts from a warehouse and had their pick up truck on
the tracks. One man was killed when
the truck that was hit by the train slammed into him.
The other jumped and was taken into custody by Chicago police.
This delayed #3 for 2 hours and 30 minutes.
No other trains were delayed on the triple track main line while # 3 sat
on main 1. If that Amtrak delay was
not strange enough, then how about this one on November 12th at
Barstow, CA on train #4? Train 4
was delayed at Barstow for 1 hour and 14 minutes on the BNSF due to a group of
77 senior citizens boarding the train, with their luggage. While the seniors
were boarding, 2 ladies already on the train, one in a wheel chair, who left her
medication back at Los Angeles and another woman, who was taking medication with
alcohol, got into an altercation. EMS was called and transported one to the
hospital and the other back to Los Angeles.
During late November, BNSF has been
having trouble getting traffic through Clovis, NM.
The problem starts with crews from Amarillo not being able to get their
trains to Clovis in a reasonable length of time.
This is due in part to too much traffic trying to squeeze through
Amarillo especially if one train has work to do.
The crews also are sitting outside of Clovis for several hours as so many
trains have a block swap at Clovis any more that it is getting congested.
All this is causing the Amarillo based crews to have trips of 8 to 10
hours on the 103 mile run to Clovis. This
means that the crews must get their rest at Clovis prior to taking a train back
to Amarillo. Of course, there are
more trains than rested crews, so there the eastbound trains begin to back up
until crews get rested at Clovis then the Clovis based crews bringing trains
from Belen begin going dead on the hours of Service Law west of Clovis and have
to be rescued which in turn exhausts the Clovis extra boards.
By the time the Amarillo crew gets the train back to Amarillo, they are
going to get out of Amarillo again on their rest causing many crews to tie up
for 14 hours making it difficult to get a crew to go back to Clovis and starting
the cycle over again because now crews coming from Wellington are going dead on
the hours of service law east of Amarillo. With a crew going dead east of
Amarillo that means that the Amarillo crew taking a train to Clovis has been on
duty for several hours when the depart Amarillo and the cycle starts over again.
For example, on November 20th, there were 16 Amarillo crews in
Clovis with none of them rested at 10:00 AM until 14:00.
There were 26 crews in Amarillo with none rested until 13:45.
This pool had 53 engineers on the board that day with two on the off
board and the rest of them on the road.
During the night of November 22nd, a trio of Warbonnets was
seen crossing Northern Missouri. Train
S-CHIWAT7-22 was spotted at Hardin, MO with BNSF 888, 128 & 679 for power.
On that just had a pair of Warbonnets was seen at Emporia, KS on Train
V-MCICLO3-08 on November 9th with BNSF 920 & 735 for power.
With all the extra traffic around on BNSF some trains get some rather unusual power. One such train was the Z-KCMDEN1-31 seen crossing Nebraska with BNSF 2951, 2410, 2914, 2596, & 2453. (GP39-2, GP30, GP39E, GP35, GP30.) All should have still been ATSF blue & yellow except for the 2914 that should be BN Green. The train had 40 loads and 43 empties departing McCook on November 1st at 16:54 in the afternoon. This Z train handles many Coors empty tank cars.
Another train that had some odd power for the transcon was the X-CRICRL4-29 handling 73 empty covered hoppers from Cedar Rapids, IA to Carlsbad, NM; with BNSF GP30 2439 leading the B23-7 4241 & UP SD70M 4560
It is still odd to catch an intermodal train on the Transcon with no Dash 9s (or Dash 8s) in the consist. One such train was spotted at Amarillo, TX on November 12th when train Q-KCKRIC1-11 went west out of Amarillo with SD40-2s BNSF 6944, BNSF 8032 & CEFX 3128.
Another odd move was seen at
Harper, KS early morning on November 12th when train H-BARKCK1-10
showed up with BNSF 4159 leading HLCX 6403, NS 9369, CSXT 7619 & BNSF 103.
The real odd part was over 100 cars behind the locomotives as the rear of
this train had BNSF slug 3969 tagging along.
It apparently had some wreck damage at Barstow where it has been used and
was enroute to Topeka for repairs.
Foreign Power.
Many foreign units are operating on BNSF’s main lines during November. More so than normal. Many of the Vehicle trains that operate from McCook, IL are coming as far west as Clovis, NM with solid sets of CSX power. The S-MEMWAT that comes from Memphis also is a frequent recipient of solid CSX power. NS power is still normal on the Q-NYCLAC trains with it coming back east on a variety of trains including solid sets on eastbound Z trains. Solid sets of UP power have been seen on various trains across the system including intermodal trains. CN power has been prevalent as well lately. In addition to all the foreign road power, many, many BNSF leasers are operating in a variety of positions including several MRL units on the lead this month. Here are some examples of the foreign power during November on BNSF rails.
11/5/ at Amarillo: Train V-PHXKCK4-04 W/ UP 4149, NS 9265, UP 4419
11/12 at Waynoka: Train M-AMSKCK1-11 W/ UP 7213, HLCX 8171 (BN paint), IC 6265 (CN paint) BNSF 8012
11/15 at Ottawa, KS: Train M-KCKPHX1-14 W/ CSXT 627, UP 3890, NS 6589
11/19 at Hereford, TX: Train Z-SBDWSP1-17 W/ UP 7530, UP 7558, UP 7204
11/22 at Carrollton, MO: Train G-EDUELP9-20 W/ UP 4535, CN 5766, CSXT 453, BNSF 9254
11/25 at Fargo, OK: Train S-MEMWAT1-24 W/ MRL 354, BNSF 6932, & CN 5284
11/26 at Waynoka: Train Q-NYCLAC6-25 W/ NS 9658, CRIX 5971 (UP paint), NS 8312 (CR paint) BNSF 4033
12/5 at Fort Madison: Train Q-NYCLAC6-04 W/ NS 8454, NS 8667, CP 6013, CP 5931.
Sold,
and old Power on BNSF
BNSF has moved several engines this month to National Railway Equipment in Silvis, IL. Some Ex ATSF C30-7s were among those moved. They included the ATSF 8162 and BNSF 5169 from Topeka. The 5169 was billed and tagged as ATSF 5169 so it was not confused with the current BNSF 5169, a nearly new Dash 9-44CW. BN C30-7 5088 moved from Glendive to Silvis during November also. Another BNSF SD45-2 was sold off to NRE and moved from Topeka during November, the 6486. It won’t be surprising to see it return as NREX 6486 to BNSF rails in the near future as many of the other sold off SD45-2s have.
Not all SD45-2s have been sold
yet and not all are in rock train service.
On November 28th BNSF 6488 was seen leading an empty grain
train from Hereford, TX to Greenwood, IL. The
X-HERGNW9-28 had BNSF 6488, NS 9148, BNSF 5095 for power as it ran from Hereford
to Kansas City where a Dash 9 was added to point and the 5095 was cut off from
the rear of the consist. Another
SD45-2 in the lead was seen on Curtis Hill in Oklahoma on November 19th
with train V-MCISBD8-17 with BNSF 6502 leading SD40-2 6379 up the hill.
Special
Moves
On November 30th, train M-TULPTR1-30 departed Tulsa, OK at 21:55 with some very odd loads on the head end of the train. The train itself was powered by a pair of NS locomotives, Dash 9-40CW 8938 and Dash 8-39C 8206. Behind the power was a trio of cars including two idler flats with the middle car being KWUX 17 a 347-ton load heading for Siemens Westinghouse at Houston. Immediately behind that were five flat cars loaded with Korean G8/G12 locomotives heading for Houston for a trip to Brazil. The Korean locomotives came from NRE at Silvis, IL and moved to Tulsa via Galesburg and St. Louis. The Five cars were the OTTX 97766 (with Korean engine 3050), BN 630620 (engine 3019), BNSF 585007 (engine 3014), OTTX 93601(engine 3052) & BN 630324 (engine 3039). In addition to these 5 locomotives already in Houston where they arrived on December 4th, there are supposed to be five more moving to Houston. Two currently show loaded at Silvis on the BNSF, one is in Barstow, IL and the other two are still in the shops at Silvis as of December 4th at 22:00.
Another Special move for BNSF is
to take place in January. BNSF is
going to place the Hudson Bay GP10 at Waynoka onto the museum track that is just
east of the BNSF main line and next to the former ATSF depot.
This will probably take place as the crews come to Waynoka to start work
on the Cimarron River Bridge in Mid January.
RCL
Yard jobs
BNSF GP7 1372 (ex ATSF 2236) and GP9 1678 (ex ATSF 2293) have been sent to NRE at Silvis for Cattron Remote Control additions. I have listed these notes here because as of November 30th, BNSF has no more yards scheduled for conversion to Remote Control yard jobs for 2005. There were several yards scheduled to start Remote Control Operations in January, but all have been postponed indefinitely. This does not change the status of the current Remote Control yards on BNSF.
Record numbers of trains are operating on the BNSF now.
On November 22nd, BNSF had 118 trains go over Cajon Pass not
including the helper moves that totaled 16 for the day.
This was a total of 89 BNSF trains, 3 Amtrak trains and 26 UP trains.
Four days prior to that BNSF had 111 trains over Cajon Pass according to
the report that I received. For
some reason BNSF told the County Commissioners for Sumner and Harper counties in
Kansas when the second main track is completed that they would be able to run
200 trains per day through Wellington, KS.
That is one train every 7 minutes. That
number is not realistic, as the crews can not change that fast, and the
terminals can not handle that volume. Currently
Wellington sees an average of 54 trains per day.
Some days, the train count is as high as 72 trains and other days as low
as 30. These 54 trains are averaged
over a month’s time. Besides that
BNSF does not have the crews or locomotives for that number unless all trains
will have one engine and be 10 car trains.
Then there is still the crew issue.
During October, BNSF re-activated the 9 symbol Z trains running across
the Northern lines between Chicago and Seattle and Portland.
Starting in Mid October, the Z-SSECHC9 began departing South Seattle at
23:00 on Sunday, Monday & Tuesday with arrival at Cicero Yard in Chicago on
Wednesday, Thursday, & Friday at 17:15.
The Z-CHCSSE9 departs Cicero at 13:30 on Monday, Tuesday, & Wednesday
and arrives in South Seattle on Wednesday, Thursday, & Friday at 20:00.
Train Z-CHCPTL9 departs Cicero at 14:15 on Monday, Tuesday, &
Wednesday with arrival in Portland on Wednesday, Thursday, & Friday at
18:30. Train Z-PTLCHC9- departs
Portland at 04:30 on Tuesday & Wednesday with arrival in Cicero at 11:30 on
Friday & Saturday. These had
been running as the 1 symbol trains on a slightly slower schedule since February
when the 9 symbols were dropped.
Container trains out of Tacoma, WA have recently had a symbol change.
During November the new symbol of TCE was added instead of using TAC.
TCE stands for Tacoma Export also called Tacoma North.
TCP is another new Tacoma symbol that was activated during November.
It stands for Tacoma Pierce County Terminal.
TCS is now being used for Tacoma South originations and TCB has been used
for some time for Tacoma Blair Terminal. BNSF
is now serving 4 terminals at Tacoma instead of 3 prior to November 2004.
Beginning on November 26th, BNSF started the UPS Peak Season
with all UPS shipments taking priority over everything else on the railroad.
That means that all the Z trains, or at least most of the Z trains now
have the full attention of the dispatchers and their superiors.
The Santa Fe had a long standing tradition with UPS for on time
performance and BNSF has continued that.
On November 23rd, BNSF operated a special four car train from
Kansas City to Clovis as train O-KCKCLO1-23 with BNSF President and CEO Matt
Rose aboard. The objective for this
trip was to check out the new second main track in the daylight and see where
the BNSF was spending the money at. Although
I can not confirm this, I was told the trip was also to check out Clovis yard
and see why the traffic was backing up there.
Power for the train was Warbonnet clad BNSF Dash 9-44VCW 4704 pulling
four business cars, Sleeper 67, Business Cars 3 & 4 and Theater Observation
32, the William Barstow Strong.
The second main track on the Panhandle Sub is being worked on in three
sections currently. Part one is for
the grading and bridge work to be finished between West Tangier at MP 394.3 and
what will be a new crossover east of Shattuck (Probably called east Shattuck) at
MP 410 by January 15th. Most
of this is done now with some work between MP 404 and 405 to be completed when
possible. This 4100 feet of roadbed
is causing some problems right now as the new track will pass over Federal
Wetlands. BNSF is working to
establish a like amount of wetlands to replace what they will be taking.
No work has been done what so ever in that short section of land.
There is roadbed built butting up against it on both ends and bridges
almost to the those locations, but nothing done in that 4100 feet.
Almost all of the bridge work has been done on this except for a couple
of bridges near Tangier. Asphalt
has been laid on much of the new roadbed as well to get it ready for rail and
ties. The rail was to be delivered
the week of December 6th and to start unloading that week.
One other section that has proven to be a problem for BNSF here was
through downtown Gage, OK. The
biggest problems is that the new main track will be dangerously close to several
houses that do not seem to be moving. One
will have the roadbed only a few feet from their garage.
This same situation occurs in West Woodward where several house trailers
are only a few feet from the new main 1.
Part two is between MP 410 and Goodwin at MP 419.3 that will connect to
the current end of two main tracks that runs from Fort Sumner, NM to Goodwin.
It appears that the station of Goodwin will move approximately one mile
east to a set of new double crossovers that should be called Goodwin when put
into service. Roadbed work is just
getting under way for this segment and no bridge work has started as of yet.
Part three is between Attica and Milan, KS.
Work started in October with the first bridge being built just east of
the east end of the South Siding at Attica at MP 284.2 over Little Bluff Creek.
Several more bridges are in various stages between there and east of Eula
at MP 279. The east end of this
segment is at MP 252.7. Plans call
for this to be completed in July of 2005.
When the Ames Construction crews finish with the roadbed and bridges on
Part one listed above, they are to move to Waynoka, Ok and start on the second
main track linking the current two main tracks from West Waynoka at MP 347 to
Heman at MP 351. (This is actually
3.2 miles due to a short mile post between MP 350 & 351 being only 1100
feet.) The steel for the Cimarron
River Bridge has been delivered to Waynoka and is on the MofW yard there now.
Further West on the Hereford Sub, The third main track through Amarillo
is well under way. Work around the
current former ATSF yard office at Junior Yard has taken place to allow room for
the new main to pass. A new
concrete retaining wall has been built to keep crews from walking out of the
office doors and on to a main track. Road
bed clearing work has been done most of the way between West Tower at MP 552.7
and the Washington Street overpass at MP 557.5 just east of Zita.
Speaking of third main tracks, I was told that the third main track
between San Bernardino and Summit over Cajon Pass in California will become a
reality in 2006. With over 100
trains per day traveling over the Pass, three main tracks is a necessity not a
luxury.
Getting that second main track can not come soon enough for the MofW forces. This has been a very wet fall for the Transcon east of Belen. There are many spots especially on the single track sections that have soft spots in the roadbed. This is causing slow orders to be placed in many of those locations for several days until the track department can get to them and get them fixed. Most of the slow orders are 40 MPH or 60 MPH, but it is still a delay for many trains that travel the 70 MPH transcon daily. The good news about this is that with all the track work going on, the surface gangs are not far away so it doesn’t take long to get the track resurfaced and back up to speed.
On
November 1st, the National Carriers Conference Committee released the
section 6 notices that affect then next contract with the UTU and BLE who
represent the conductors and engineers. Those
notices contained language that said the railroads wish to have one man crews on
through freight trains. The one man
would be a new position called a Transportation Employee.
This does not mean that this will happen in the near future, only that
the railroads wish to get the one man crew in this contract.
The NCCC Section 6 also stated that if the unions wish to keep two people
on the through freights, then they had no problem with that, but they would only
pay for one man and the two could split that.
The current national contracts are up at the end of 2004.
Near the end of the year, BNSF will be selling or leasing another branch
line to a short line operator. This
is the former GN line in Kettle Falls, WA.
I will include it next month as the details all become available.
It
is the Christmas season as I finish this month’s report.
I pray that each of you on this list have a very Merry Christmas and a
great new year. For those of us
that have followed the ATSF and now the BNSF for many years, we have seen many
changes. I imagine that 2005 will
be filled with many more changes for the railroad industry.
May your Christmas season be great and may it be filled with Warbonnets!
Merry
Christmas,
Keel