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Michael, Your Lind reference reminds me of an observation I made a few months ago while exploring the back roads of Adams County WA. I followed an empty grain truck up State Highway 23 to Sprague WA, and when he turned into Sprague, I decided to see if he was going to stop at the Sprague elevators right there on the BNSF mainline. Sure enough, that truck plus three others had pulled into the rail side elevator waiting to load. My first inclination of their next destination was that they would simply short haul down the road to the BNSF shuttle train facility in Ritzville, since BNSF no longer provides service to the Sprague elevators despite a nice long siding there. So I waited around until the first truck was loaded and ready to go.... However, instead of heading down the road to Ritzville, this truck turned back down State Highway 23 heading toward Pullman. I followed him at a distance as far as St John, lost sight of him going out of St John, so I doubled back to St John and guessed that he had turned down the county road Endicott. Yep, I caught up with him going toward Endicott. He continued south passed Endicott, crossed over Highway 26, turned down Highway 127, and finally pulled into the riverside elevators at Central Ferry. I turned around to head back toward Sprague (since my intent was to watch the BNSF action at the Fishtrap recreation area), and on the way back I met the other three trucks that had been at the Sprague elevators, all heading the same direction as the first truck. Okay, enough of the Grandpa Simpson story line..... The conclusions from this trip is this: BNSF is losing traffic by their refusal to serve the the many mainline elevators. They probably assume that they will simply get that traffic at their Ritzville super terminal. Wrong. BNSF's decision to deny service to the line side elevators in deference to their unit train facility has cause at least some of that traffic to shift to the barge lines way down south. It is a little over 23 miles by I-90 from Sprague to Ritzville, while it is about 90 miles from Sprague to Central Ferry over a combination of State Highways and narrow county roads with alot of curvature and up and down running. My guess is that this traffic shift has more to do with service levels than with elevator price, because the party line around BNSF clones is that the unit train service from the Ritzville elevator can not only match the barge line rates, but beat them.
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