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Well Tom, I live right in the midst of the PCC network, and I have had conversations with PCC employees, so I know a little more about it than the average outsider. There's certainly more to the story than the link I posted, as more mainstream news sites pick up the story I'll try and post them for you so you'll have a clearer picture. Suffice to say my suspicions and critizisms of BNSF usually end up being vindicated. One has every right to question BNSF's motives in indirectly building a brand new grain shuttle loader for 110 car unit trains that are moving that grain less than 300 miles, when there are already plenty of large elevators with sidings right next to the BNSF mainline. Was the capital cost of the 110 car facility justified in light of established elevators having multicar loading capabilities? Is it worth it to **** off every single one of the elevators all along the BNSF mainline, denying them all service now, when most of those elevators are owned in whole or in part by the area grain growers themselves? Does BNSF really think the area grain growers will screw themselves out of their shares of ownership in those online elevators just to take advantage of the alleged "efficiencies" of 110 car shuttle operations. Wouldn't BNSF have been better off simply converting the existing elevators into shuttle facilities? You should also know that BN spent a lot of money to upgrade the Marshall line in the late 1970's all the way down to Lewiston in anticipation of running shuttles down there, only to do a 180 and embargo the last 30 miles of the line, choosing then to build a brand new 26 car grain loader in Fallon, only to give up on that when the line sale was finalized, of course first taking the precaution of ripping out that last 30 miles to Lewiston to keep all Palouse rail traffic interchanged at Marshall, only to forego any meaningful Marshall interchange............... It's not a "vendetta" as you alleged, more like a case study in why monopolistic entities can get away with making nominally wasteful business decisions. BNSF continues to amaze me in so many ways, and it's a wonder how much longer they can keep up this line of behaviour before it bites them in the FRED.
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