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VerM, you miss (I presume purposefully) the whole point. Exaggerations aside, the first question is how far from Tacoma an eastbound could travel before the crew goes dead, that is if the railroad really tried. As I remember from various John Kneiling columns, the old 100 mile crew district went out with the steamers, and crew districts of 300 miles are more the norm. This assumes of course that average speed in practice has also evolved along with the technology. I can see where line congestion can cause average speeds in the teens, but for a line with extra capacity such as the Stampede Pass line this is not an excuse. When BN spent the $100 million OR SO to rehab this line, they did so with the stated purpose of it handling 20 to 30 trains per day. Right now it has 5 OR SO per day. Thus the Stampede Pass line is not going to have the time constraints of the more congested I-5 corridor. It is axiomatic that the more trains you can take off these more congested corridors and reroute to the less congested lines, the more capacity you free up on the more heavily used lines for the higher paying cargos. If UP could reroute trains via Stampede Pass due to open access, then it is certainly a win win fromt the standpoint of UP operations and maximizing utilization of a currently underutilized line. You mention the I-5 time constraints as proof that better times cannot be made on the Stampede Pass line, when in contrast the lack of traffic on Stampede would not force these constraints, so in that vein it is a poor example of counterpoint. <br /> <br />Okay, so let's take your position that UP can't run this route without establishing a new crew district somewhere along the line, even though it is only 247 miles by rail from Tacoma to Kennewick. Is the cost of this new crew district going to outweigh the benefits of opening up capacity on the Gorge and I-5 lines? We know that UP has has to turn away business to avoid a meltdown. Wouldn't it be a net gain if UP could retain this business without going into meltdown? <br /> <br />As for rerouting Amtrak, as you must be aware the BNSF has tried to get Amtrak off the Stevens Pass route onto Stampede and the ex-NP line. Why would they propose this other than to free up capacity on the Stevens Pass line? Apparently, it is important. As for rerouting the Empire Builder via MRL through Montana and the ex-Milwaukee through South Dakota (a line that only hosts a few coal trains now and then), it is a similar situation, as there are fewer trains on the ex-NP line than the High Line. So what if it adds 6 to 8 hours to the schedule, people don't ride Amtrak to make good time. Based on the latest news, an 8 to 10 hour delay is the norm for Amtrak, the only diffence with the I-90 corridor reroute is that the delay is built into the schedule. If that time delay is to egregious, we can go one step further and just eliminate Amtrak altogether. Don't you think the railroads would be in favor of that? If so, why? Is it not to free up the lines for the freights?
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