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Empire Builder moved to a more southerly route?
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[quote user="beaulieu"][quote user="futuremodal"][quote user="diningcar"] <p>futuremodel, why do you believe it is inevitable??</p><p>[/quote]</p><p>For no other reason than it makes sense to do so. More population to serve, moving Amtrak to a less congested rail line, an infered approval from Montana passenger rail advocates (although I'd like to see their comments if they were presented with the idea as being the <em>only</em> way to reintroduce passenger service to the I-90 corridor), and frankly a lot more scenery than the High Line.</p><p>[quote]</p><p>With Glacier Park such a significant attraction, while Yellowstone is many miles from the southern line, I see no tourist motivation for the change. Also, the southern line would have to undergo substantial renovation to handle a passenger operation and who should pay for that?</p><p>[/quote]</p><p>I don't believe the MRL would need anything close to "substantial renovation" to effectively handle Amtrak service. From what I've seen of MRL it appears to be in A-1 condition. I do not know about the track conditions east of Billings on BNSF.</p><p>As for accessing the National Parks, it would make sense from my perspective for Amtrak to team up with bus lines to get to the NP's. Go by bus from Missoula to Glacier, go by bus from Livingston to Yellowstone. And if the EB were routed via Bismark, that'd take it right through the Theodore Roosevelt NP.</p><p>[/quote]</p><p>For North Dakota, it would be worse, and for that reason they would fight to keep it the way that things are now. </p><p>[/quote]</p><p>I'm still not sure why some people think ND would instinctively oppose this reroute? I've checked the respective populations of these two corridors, and the I-94 corridor has slightly more population than the US 2 corridor.</p><p>It may represent a change, but it is highly subjective to suggest this change would be "worse".</p><p>[quote] </p><p>The MRL line isn't congested, but once you get east of Billings you start running into coal trains, lots of them. Figure 12 trains a day in each direction, all but one of the EBs will be loaded coal trains. East of Glendive, MT each of the coal trains will have a manned helper which has to return to Glendive from Sully Springs, ND (the top of the second hill), so between Glendive and Sully Springs you can double the number of WBs because of the light helpers. All this on single track and the coal trains slowly slog up those two hills. At least on the Hi-line a fair number of the freights are Z-trains. </p><p>[/quote]</p><p>Could any of these coal trains be switched down to the ex-Milwaukee line? Which power plants are served by these I-94 coal trains?</p><p>How did the NP/BN manage to co-host these coal trains with the North Coast Limited/Hiawatha?</p><p>Is this necessarily an imovable impediment?</p>
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