This thread will be dedicated to only railroad and rail infratructure news in the Pacific Northwest. This includes mass transportation projects, constructions and updates, passenger and freight rail news, projects, constructions and updates, derailments, major transit reroutes, and everything else rail related.

I will move the Stampede pass reopening information into here for easy access with all rail developments.

Transportation officials seek solution to bottlenecks on rails
By BRAD WONG
SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER REPORTER

Puget Sound-area port officials often boast that they can handle the goods arriving to meet an insatiable nationwide demand for inexpensive Asian imports.

In the region's transportation network, though, the bottleneck in the coming years likely won't be the ports, but the train system.

Trains hauling international cargo and other goods from the Puget Sound area over Stevens Pass will encounter congestion by 2009, according to a report conducted for the Washington Public Ports Association.

The reason: Stevens Pass, one of the main and direct rail lines to the major inland market of Chicago, has a sustainable capacity of 28 trains per day. But by 2009, especially near the winter holiday season, those tracks could see a peak of 34 trains daily.

"This is not a simple fix," said David Hatzenbuhler, MainLine Management Inc. president and the author of the report. Using import projections of sea cargo, he estimates that Stevens Pass could see about 50 daily trains by 2025.

A second track and other major rail improvements to the pass are unlikely because of that area's steep topography. Improvements, his report said, could cost $500 million.

Higher demand could divert trains to routes along the Columbia River, a flatter area. But on that route, which also can be crowded, it can take longer to bring time-sensitive goods to market.

With more imports in mind, BNSF Railway Co., one of the main freight haulers in Washington, is considering improving Stampede Pass, the third major rail route across the state.

The pass cannot accommodate international cargo, which travels double-stacked on train beds and can stand more than 20 feet high. MainLine Management estimates that adding about 3 feet of space through the pass tunnel, either by lowering the tracks or notching its ceiling, will cost $25 million.

"We are looking at the possibility of modifying the Stampede Pass tunnel to accommodate international cargo containers," company spokesman Gus Melonas said.

BNSF, the state Transportation Department, shippers and the ports of Seattle and Tacoma have yet to identify specific improvements necessary or the source of funds they would need.

"That has yet to be determined. We're in uncharted territory," said Barbara Ivanov, freight strategy director for the Transportation Department.

Hatzenbuhler believes that tens of millions of dollars, if not hundreds of millions, worth of railroad improvements are needed statewide to avoid gridlock associated with increased rail demand.

"Millions won't get this job done in the short term," he said. "The railroads alone cannot fund this. We're not just talking about international trade. The railroads are in a much bigger business than that."

Garbage, passengers, boxcars, automobiles and grain, in addition to international cargo trains, make their way throughout the state by rail.

Historically, railroads have paid for their own infrastructure improvements. But given the scope of rail upgrades necessary, Melonas said, his company wants to talk with the state government and the ports about a partnership in funding.

The ports association released the rail capacity study last year, months before delays at Southern California ports got national attention and pushed more cargo ships to the Puget Sound area. This year, the report is taking on greater significance because of the increase in port traffic.

The ports of Seattle and Tacoma report that at least 60 percent of all the international cargo that goes through their facilities is destined for major inland markets. Last year, according to the Port of Tacoma, nearly $17 billion worth of imported goods moved on long-distance rail to other markets.

If the anticipated rail problems are not fixed, "The cargo could go elsewhere," Port of Seattle Commissioner Patricia Davis said.

The port's cargo director, Michael Burke, believes that public policy officials still have time to find solutions to any possible rail congestion. "This is not a crisis," he said. "But we are very concerned to make sure the rails can work."

So, in other words, due to the back log of traffic and cargo in California and the huge demand for Asian products , major sea traffic has been rerouted to the Puget Sound ports of Tacoma and Seattle. These shipping companies depend primarily on rails to transport their cargo.

With the extra traffic on these lines, the Burlington Northern Santa Fe Railway (BNSF) is already strained. Now add the possibility of Amtrak trains serving the Cascades, we are in a rail transport crisis.

Now for those who do not understand the situation or just don't know the area, as of right now, there are 3 direct rail routes across the Cascade mountain range in Washington State.

The Stevens Pass route located by the red line.

Stampede Pass route located by the blue line.

The Gorge route located by the orange line near the bottom.


http://img127.echo.cx/img127/6554/routes9xe.png

The steep Stevens Pass main line leaves Spokane and travels west, across the Columbia River into Wenatchee. From this point, the rail line extends over the Cascade Range via the historic 8-mile long Cascade Tunnel. The line continues west into Everett where it joins the BNSF north-south main line. It takes a train 45 minutes to clear the Cascade tunnel and another 15 minutes to clear the tunnel of fumes before another train can pass. That is 24 trains a day max and Stevens pass has reached capacity. Stevens mainly carries intermodal traffic.

The Columbia River Gorge route is from Spokane to Vancouver, Washington (Columbia River Gorge main line). To reach the Columbia River Gorge main line from Spokane, the route follows the former Northern Pacific (NP) main line out of Spokane through Cheney, Ritzville, and Connell to Pasco. The old NP main line then connects with the Columbia River Gorge main line in Pasco, following the north bank of the Columbia River from Pasco into Vancouver, Washington. She is primarily a flat grade and this route is near if not at its capacity.

And finally Stampede Pass. Recently reopened after the tracks were torn up due to lack of traffic in the 1980's, only 6 trains pass through each day. To reach the Stampede Pass line from Spokane, it is necessary to follow the Pasco East main line to Pasco. This connects with the Stampede Pass main line which continues northwestward up the Yakima Valley. A number of communities are located along this route, including Kennewick, Prosser, Toppenish, Yakima, Ellensburg, and Cle Elum.
From Ellensburg the line continues towards the Cascade Mountains where it rises to 2,840 feet and crosses the mountains at Stampede Pass via the 1.8-mile long Stampede Tunnel. The rail line continues west into Auburn where it joins the BNSF north-south main line. From here the main line continues north towards Seattle and south towards Tacoma and Portland, Oregon.

Stevens Pass and the Columbia Gorge route are already too congested to handle extra traffic, nor any Amtrak trains. Both routes would have a second main line constructed to handle the excess traffic, but scenery and topography would make that difficult and very expensive.

The best option would be to fully reopen Stampede Pass. The former Burlington Northern, faced with declining traffic in the early 1980s, took the 77.9-mile Stampede Pass route out of service indefinitely. That indefinitely was short lived. In 1997, faced with a large traffic resurgence, BNSF partially reopened Stampede Pass to allow the excess trains alternate passage, outside the clogged Stevens and Gorge routes. And as I said, partially. This line is closed to intermodal traffic as container cars are too tall for the low ceiling. Notching of the roof as done with Cascade Tunnel (http://www.trainweb.org/mcnwr/images/Joe/West%20Portal%20Cascade%20Tunnel%209-30-04%20a.jpg) (look at the upper edges) or lowering of the floor is required for all trains too pass smoothly over Stampede, along with extensive track and signal upgrades. Cost could be in the several of millions of dollars, but this is the best option for our state's railroad traffic. This could also handle Amtrak traffic.

But if BNSF and the state fail to realize any of the options listed above, there certainly will be a severe crisis on our hands. Traffic would be rerouted to other ports, and our railroads, ports, trucking companies and the economy would suffer.

King Street Station Renovation and updating

Since King Street Station was built in 1906, it's been remodeled twice—once in the 1940s and again during the 1960s for the Seattle World's Fair. Somewhere along the way, the station's identity was lost. The original architecture and beautiful ornate ceiling are hidden by art deco plaster walls and ceiling tiles.

From this beautiful ceiling:
http://usarail.hmc5.com/seattle_index.jpg

To this:
http://www.spacefits.com/images/ceiling-2.jpg
(Not actually King Street Station ceiling, but you get the idea.

Another transformation is taking place as King Street Station nears its 100th birthday. This time, the renovation is dedicated to restoring and rehabilitating the historic grandeur of the station and to providing a safe, comfortable experience for a growing generation of rail passengers.

Why is King Street Station being redeveloped?
• Station facilities are run down and inadequate.

• Increases in service will only compound demands on King Street Station. WSDOT and Amtrak plan to increase the number of intercity (service connecting city to city on a railroad right-of-way in densely traveled corridors) trains to 38 per day by 2023. Sound Transit plans call for commuter train services to increase to 26 trains per day with the full build-out of Sounder by 2006.
• The station's rundown condition stands in stark contrast to the growing redevelopment of Seattle's south downtown area, discouraging travelers from using rail service.

The end result
The renovation will be completed in two phases. The first activities started in August 2003 and will significantly change the appearance and function of the station. The second phase envisions King Street Station as a major transportation hub, providing access to major statewide, regional, and local public transportation services.

Project Benefits
• Increased safety for station users through installation of security measures and improved lighting.

• Improved station access, wayfinding system, and parking.
• Improved connections to regional transportation services.

Phase I: Interim Renovation Activities
WSDOT and the station's owner—the Burlington Northern and Santa Fe Railway—continue to work on finalizing the details of a 25-year lease agreement for the station. Once the agreement is in place, the rest of the $16.9 million interior/exterior station renovation project will proceed. WSDOT anticipates that Phase 1 repairs will be completed in 2005.

State funds, federal grants, and contributions from Amtrak, Sound Transit, and the South Downtown Foundation totaling nearly $17 million make the first phase of the renovation possible.

Work on the station's interior includes: • Rebuilding the restrooms

• Expanding the waiting room
• Building a new ticket office and baggage area
• Restoring historic surfaces
• Reopening the exterior grand staircase at the Jackson Street entrance
• Opening long-closed windows
• Putting in new user-friendly signage
• Installing enhanced safety and security systems
The building's exterior is also being restored, with general cleaning and repair, replacing the worn metal awnings, adding a new roof, improving the clock tower, and developing a pedestrian-friendly plaza on the Jackson Street level.

Phase II: Full Build-out of the King Street Transportation Center
The second phase will start with a full-build out plan, as funds become available. The station will be the central component of a major transportation center where all levels of public transportation services will be conveniently linked together.

The King Street Transportation Center will provide a central location for accessing: • Amtrak Cascades regional service

• Amtrak long-distance service
• Sounder commuter rail service
• Regional and local transit buses
• Waterfront streetcar
• Ferry routes crossing Puget Sound
• Planned LINK light rail service
• Planned Seattle Monorail
• Major north-south and east-west interstate highways
• Local roadways
• Pedestrian and bicycle facilities



When all commuter and intercity rail services are in operation, Seattle's King Street Station is projected to become the third busiest railroad station west of Chicago, after Los Angeles and San Jose, California.

What is the project timeline?

• Phase 1 is scheduled for completion in 2005.
• Planning, designing, and engineering work for the Phase II track, platform, signal, and bridgework begins in 2004.
• Further engineering and design refinement, assembling the necessary funds, and related activity will continue over the next few years.
• Additional transportation center upgrades will take place as funds become available.


How is safety being addressed?
As part of the first phase of renovation, enhanced safety and security systems will be installed. Improved lighting, upgraded building systems (electric, plumbing, heating, etc.), and improved accessibility will enhance safety for those who visit or work at the station.

Phase I:
Interim King Street Station rehabilitation - $16.9 million
Funds currently available from Amtrak, federal, state, and regional sources

Phase II:
Track capacity improvements - $65 to 85 million (preliminary estimate)
Building rehabilitation and other transit elements - $70 to 90 million (preliminary estimate)

Amtrak Cascades Ridership and Station On-Off Information



Amtrak and the Washington State Department of Transportation (WSDOT) measure the public's use of the Amtrak Cascades in two different ways. The first is ridership, which measures how many people are riding the train each year. The second is station on-offs, which measure passenger volumes per station. Both of these measurements are important, yet different.

What's the difference between ridership and station on-offs?
The best way to distinguish between ridership and station on-offs is to keep in mind where the counting is taking place. Ridership is a measurement that is made on the train. Station on-offs are measurements that are made at the station.


Amtrak Cascades Ridership

How is ridership calculated?
Ridership measures the number of people who are riding on the Amtrak Cascades, which travels from Vancouver, B.C., to Eugene, Oregon. This measurement is calculated by counting the number of tickets sold for each train, each day. This number is then converted into monthly and annual totals for each train and for the entire Amtrak Cascades service.

What is it used for?
Ridership tells Amtrak, WSDOT, policymakers, and the public how popular the Amtrak Cascades are with the traveling public, be it for an individual train or the system as a whole. It helps Amtrak and WSDOT plan for future service, manage revenues, develop marketing strategies, and set performance goals.

Amtrak Cascades ridership from 1993 to 2003
http://www.wsdot.wa.gov/rail/cascades/images/AC-Annual-Ridership.gif

Why is Amtrak Cascades ridership on the rise?
We credit the steady increase in Amtrak Cascades ridership to a combination of factors including: • increased train frequency;
• reduced train travel times;
• increased traffic congestion;
• customer service improvements;
• smart, local marketing and promotion;
• custom-built Talgo trains; and
• station improvements.

Amtrak Station On-Offs for the Pacific Northwest, 1993 to 2003

How are station on-offs calculated?
Passenger volumes per station, or station on-offs, measure the number of people using a specific train station. This is calculated by counting the number of people who get on and off the trains at each station each day, which is then converted into monthly and annual totals for each location.

What is it used for?
Station on-offs measures ridership distribution per station and which city origins and destinations are the most popular with train riders. This measurement can help local governments and business owners gain a better understanding of the volumes of people using the community's train station, which can support local planning efforts for increased tourism, new business development, better land use, and improved connections with other types of transportation.

Annual Data
Select from the list below to get annual data about the number of people who got on and off Amtrak trains at each listed station from 1993 to 2003.

Please note: There was no Amtrak service to Mt. Vernon/Burlington, Bellingham, and Vancouver, B.C., in 1993 and 1994.

Washington State:

Bellingham
http://www.wsdot.wa.gov/rail/cascades/images/bellingham_2003.gif

Bingen/ White Salmon
http://www.wsdot.wa.gov/rail/cascades/images/bingen_2003.gif

Centralia
http://www.wsdot.wa.gov/rail/cascades/images/centralia_2003.gif

Edmonds
http://www.wsdot.wa.gov/rail/cascades/images/edmonds_2003.gif

Ephrata
http://www.wsdot.wa.gov/rail/cascades/images/ephrata_2003.gif

Everett
http://www.wsdot.wa.gov/rail/cascades/images/everett_2003.gif

Kelso/ Longview
http://www.wsdot.wa.gov/rail/cascades/images/kelso_2003.gif

Mount Vernon
http://www.wsdot.wa.gov/rail/cascades/images/mtvernon_2003.gif

Olympia
http://www.wsdot.wa.gov/rail/cascades/images/olympia_2003.gif

Pasco
http://www.wsdot.wa.gov/rail/cascades/images/pasco_2003.gif

Seattle
http://www.wsdot.wa.gov/rail/cascades/images/seattle_2003.gif

Spokane
http://www.wsdot.wa.gov/rail/cascades/images/spokane_2003.gif

Tukwila
http://www.wsdot.wa.gov/rail/cascades/images/tacoma_2003.gif

Vancouver
http://www.wsdot.wa.gov/rail/cascades/images/vancouver_WA_2003.gif

Wenatchee
http://www.wsdot.wa.gov/rail/cascades/images/wenatchee_2003.gif

Wishram
http://www.wsdot.wa.gov/rail/cascades/images/wishram_2003.gif

Washinton State Totals
http://www.wsdot.wa.gov/rail/cascades/images/WA_Totals_2003.gif

State of Oregon:

Albany
http://www.wsdot.wa.gov/rail/cascades/images/Albany_2003.gif

Eugene
http://www.wsdot.wa.gov/rail/cascades/images/eugene_2003.gif

Portland
http://www.wsdot.wa.gov/rail/cascades/images/portland_2003.gif

Salem
http://www.wsdot.wa.gov/rail/cascades/images/salem_2003.gif

Oregon State Totals:
http://www.wsdot.wa.gov/rail/cascades/images/OR_Totals_2003.gif

Province of British Columbia, Canada:

Vancouver
http://www.wsdot.wa.gov/rail/cascades/images/Vancouver_BC_2003.gif

How has Amtrak Cascades service changed from 1993 to 2003?

How has Amtrak Cascades service changed from 1993 to 2003?
Amtrak ridership and station on-offs trends change for a variety of reasons. These typically include the frequency of rail service, travel times, population, gas prices, economic strength, transportation connection/station improvements, traffic congestion, and more. See below for some of the things that have caused changes in Amtrak Cascades service over the years.

1993
• Amtrak offers one daily Seattle-Portland round trip.

1994
• Washington State sponsors local Amtrak train for the first time.
• Amtrak adds second daily Seattle-Portland round trip.
• Washington State leases European Talgo train for temporary use of Pacific Northwest rail service.
• Renovation of Fairhaven Station in Bellingham completed.

1995
• One of two existing Seattle-Portland daily round trips extended south to Eugene.
• First train sponsored by the state of Oregon.
• After a 14-year hiatus, Amtrak Seattle-Vancouver, B.C. service reintroduced in May. Washington State sponsors this daily round trip.
• Restoration of the Kelso Multimodal Transportation Center completed.

1996
• Washington State leases second Talgo train for temporary use in the Pacific Northwest Rail Corridor.

1998
• Third daily Seattle-Portland round trip started.

1999
• New Amtrak Cascades service and equipment introduced.
• Custom-built Talgo trains replace leased equipment.
• New daily Seattle-Bellingham service started. This service compliments existing Seattle-Vancouver, B.C. service.

2000
• A second daily Seattle-Portland round trip is extended south to Eugene. Oregon sponsors this additional service.

2001
• A stop in Tukwila is added to existing service.

2002
• A new Amtrak station opens in Everett.
• Centralia Amtrak station remodel completed.

2003

• Approximately 40% of Amtrak Cascades customers booked their trips online.
• A new look for Amtrak Cascades Web site offers visitors a better online experience.
• King Street Station renovation begins to upgrade this 1906 historic treasure.
• Construction begins on new Skagit Transportation Center in Mount Vernon.

Workers needed all the livelong day

“It’s not brain surgery,” said Scott Gordon, who has worked as a Tacoma Rail switch operator for six years.
But you might think Tacoma Rail needed scarce brain surgeons if you studied its recent track record of recruiting. Last August, just 10 qualified switch operator applicants made the easy cut. Two came aboard. One made it through probation.

You can understand then why Tacoma Rail managers worry now that they must supersize their work force of 61 switch operators by 10 percent – and fast.

Growth in container shipping through the Port of Tacoma has meant well-publicized mega-growth in the ranks of longshore workers. But it has meant a less-publicized but also growing need for railroad workers in the Tideflats and feeder lines operated by Tacoma Rail.

Since 2000, the city-owned railroad has added 33 switch operators. It will begin recruiting for six more beginning Friday and might add more later this year.

“I’m hiring for attitude and work ethic,” said Paula Henry, Tacoma Rail’s assistant superintendent.

Tacoma Rail isn’t alone in its need for railroad workers. BNSF Railway Co. (formerly Burlington Northern Sante Fe) and Union Pacific railroads have scooped up rail workers by the thousands and also have current job openings in the Puget Sound region.

“Demand for railroad freight service will grow as the economy and intermodal transportation of goods expands,” according to a recent report from the U.S. Labor Department. “The need to replace workers who transfer to other occupations or retire will be the main source of job openings.”

While the Labor Department projects a slight overall decline in all rail-related transportation jobs through 2012, the railroads need bodies now to keep up with freight traffic.

Consequently, to compete for new hires, Tacoma Rail has dropped a previous requirement that applicants have previous rail experience.

“I always say if there’s an unemployed railroader out there somewhere today, then there’s a problem,” Henry said.

Tacoma Rail does, however, demand that applicants have at least two years of experience working outdoors in construction, manufacturing or manual labor. That requirement unnecessarily narrows the applicant pool for a job that doesn’t require construction or manufacturing skills.

But Henry said she needs proof that new hires can handle working outdoors in all kinds of weather.

“Working in the rain is the worst thing about the job,” Gordon said. “But if you didn’t like the rain, you picked the wrong state to live in.”

On Tuesday, Gordon started his shift moving trains in the Tideflats, then drove with a three-person crew to an industrial area at Frederickson to bring an engine back to Tacoma.

“As a job, this is pretty good. But there is an element of danger to it,” he said. “If you’re not aware of what’s going on, you could put yourself in a position to get run over.

“But if you use your brain and pay attention, you have no problems.”

Burlington Northern Santa Fe Reports 60 Percent Higher First-Quarter EPS



FORT WORTH, Texas, April 28, 2005:


Record first-quarter earnings of $0.83 per diluted share were 60 percent higher than first-quarter 2004 earnings of $0.52 per diluted share.
Freight revenues increased 18 percent compared with first-quarter 2004 to a first-quarter record of $2.90 billion.
Record first-quarter operating income of $634 million represents an increase of $224 million, or 55 percent, compared with the same 2004 period.
Quarterly operating ratio decreased more than five percentage points to 78.1 percent from 83.3 percent in the first quarter of the prior year.
Burlington Northern Santa Fe Corporation (BNSF) (NYSE: BNI) today reported record first-quarter earnings of $0.83 per diluted share, a 60 percent increase over first-quarter 2004 earnings of $0.52 per diluted share.

"For the fifth consecutive quarter, BNSF experienced double-digit freight revenue growth compared with the same periods in the prior year. The Company continues to leverage unprecedented market demand from its customers with operating efficiencies. As a result, over a period of only two years, BNSF doubled its earnings per share this quarter from the same 2003 quarter [before cumulative effect of an accounting change]," said Matthew K. Rose, BNSF Chairman, President and Chief Executive Officer.

First-quarter 2005 freight revenues increased $451 million, or 18 percent, to an all-time first-quarter record of $2.90 billion compared with 2004 first-quarter freight revenues of $2.45 billion. For the month of March 2005, BNSF’s monthly revenues exceeded $1 billion for the first time in Company history. Double-digit revenue increases were recorded in all four business groups compared to the first quarter of 2004. Consumer Products revenues increased $203 million, or 22 percent, as a result of higher revenue per unit and double-digit volume increases in international and truckload sectors. Agricultural Products revenues were up $86 million, or 20 percent, to $524 million driven by strong export moves to Pacific Rim countries and higher revenue per unit. Industrial Products revenues increased $84 million, or 15 percent, to $647 million reflecting strong demand in the building products, petroleum products, and construction products sectors, as well as higher revenue per unit. Coal revenues rose $78 million, or 15 percent, to $598 million resulting from higher demand by utility customers and higher revenue per unit.

Operating expenses for the first three months of 2005 of $2.35 billion were $268 million, or 13 percent, higher than the same period in 2004, primarily driven by a 9-percent increase in gross ton-miles and 31-percent higher fuel prices after hedge benefit.

First-quarter operating income increased $224 million, or 55 percent, to $634 million compared with the first quarter of 2004. BNSF’s operating ratio decreased more than five percentage points to 78.1 percent from 83.3 percent in the same quarter of the prior year.

BNSF’s subsidiary, BNSF Railway Company, operates one of the largest railroad networks in North America, with about 32,000 route miles in 28 states and two Canadian provinces. The railway is among the world's top transporters of intermodal traffic, moves more grain than any other American railroad, transports the components of many of the products we depend on daily, and hauls enough coal to generate about ten percent of the electricity produced in the United States.

Union Pacific Reports First Quarter Results

Omaha, Neb., April 21, 2005 – Union Pacific Corporation (NYSE: UNP) today reported earnings of $.48 per diluted share, or net income of $128 million in the first quarter of 2005 compared to earnings of $.63 per diluted share, or net income of $165 million for the first quarter of 2004.

"Operationally, our performance has improved since the beginning of the year, but our earnings were impacted by the network challenges we continue to face as well as the West Coast storm. We estimate that the storm adversely affected net income by approximately $34 million," said Dick Davidson, chairman and chief executive officer. "The bright spot continues to be the strong demand, particularly in our Energy and Industrial Products markets. Operating revenue grew by nine percent to $3.2 billion – a first quarter record and the fourth consecutive quarter that we’ve topped the $3 billion mark."

First Quarter Overview

Union Pacific Corporation reported record operating revenue of $3.2 billion in the first quarter of 2005 compared to last year’s $2.9 billion. Operating income in the first quarter of 2005 was $313 million compared to $314million for the same period in 2004.

Commodity revenue was a first quarter record of $3.0 billion, up 8 percent, compared to $2.8 billion in 2004. Drivers of the increase were a 1 percent increase in volumes as well as higher fuel surcharge recoveries and improved yields.
First quarter 2005 average revenue per car was at an all-time best of $1,306 per car, versus $1,214 in the first quarter of 2004.
The operating margin decreased to 9.9 percent in the first quarter of 2005 from 10.9 percent in 2004, primarily due to the impact of the January storm and higher fuel prices.
The Railroad’s average quarterly fuel price of $1.45 per gallon compares to $1.02 per gallon paid a year ago.
Although impacted by the January storm, quarterly average system speed, as reported to the Association of American Railroads, averaged 21.1 mph, 0.8 mph slower than the first quarter of 2004, but 0.6 mph higher than the prior quarter.
2005 First Quarter Commodity Revenue Summary versus 2004

Energy up 14 percent
Industrial Products up 12 percent
Agriculture up 9 percent
Chemicals up 8 percent
Intermodal up 3 percent
Automotive down 1 percent
"Energy and Industrial Products posted best-ever revenue performances this quarter," Davidson said. "We see solid demand continuing, with the primary exception being Automotive, which has been affected by softer auto production."

Looking Forward

"Improvements in our operating metrics are encouraging. Although we’ll face daily challenges, we believe our network management initiatives are gaining traction and we will work to build on that momentum," Davidson said. "Demand for our services remains strong and our task is to leverage that strength into better bottom-line results. As we continue to restore fluidity to our network, our customers, our employees and our shareholders will benefit."

Union Pacific Corporation owns one of America’s leading transportation companies. Its principal operating company, Union Pacific Railroad, is the largest railroad in North America, covering 23 states across the western two-thirds of the United States. A strong focus on quality and a strategically advantageous route structure enable the company to serve customers in critical and fast growing markets. The Railroad is a leading carrier of low-sulfur coal used in electrical power generation and has broad coverage of the large chemical-producing areas along the Gulf Coast. With competitive long-haul routes between all major West Coast ports and eastern gateways and as the only railroad serving all six gateways to Mexico, Union Pacific has the premier rail franchise in North America.

^oh cool!

Alaska, Canada's Yukon to Explore Rail Link

ANCHORAGE (Reuters) - Alaska and Canada's Yukon Territory have agreed to launch a $5 million feasibility study of a possible 900-mile (1,400 kilometer) rail link that would open the sparsely populated northern wilderness to more economic development, advocates said on Tuesday.

The railroad could carry ore from yet-to-be developed Alaska mines and, if expanded to western Alaska, could even serve Teck-Cominco's Red Dog Mine, the world's largest zinc producer, said Alaska Gov. Frank Murkowski.

Murkowski, along with Dennis Fentie, premier of Canada's Yukon Territory announced that they have signed an agreement to do the study. Costs will be split between the governments.

"We could move resources into the Yukon Territory and move those same resources out to the markets of the Trans-Canada railroad system and on into the United States," Murkowski said on Monday.

"I think it's justifiable and I think the economics will support this," the Republican governor said.

But skeptics say the plan is far-fetched.

"Mega-projects like this mean dreaming big, and I think we should do that. But we have to pencil it out to make sure it really works," said state Rep. David Guttenberg, a Fairbanks Democrat. While the idea of a rail link is appealing, railroads around the country have been in financial trouble, casting doubt on chances for a new Alaska-Yukon line, Guttenberg said.

Even if the long-planned Alaska natural gas pipeline is built along the proposed rail corridor, Guttenberg said, it still might be cheaper to ship supplies needed for that project over the sea by barge.

Congress has already appropriated the $2.5 million that the state of Alaska would contribute to the feasibility study, the governor's office said.

Yukon's Fentie said the governments should not wait for the private sector to initiate such a rail link.

"If that's the attitude they took when they were building the trans-continental railroad, we'd still be driving an ox cart east to west," he said.

Tacoma RMDRR Morton Line Repairs


Why is WSDOT repairing the Tacoma Rail Mountain Division Railroad (RMDRR) at Morton?
Currently the rail line is in poor condition and is nearly impossible to use. It was severely damaged in a 1996 flood.

The End Result
The project will place thousands of new rail ties and tons of ballast to stabilize the aging track bed and prepare the line to carry more freight cars. New businesses along the route will help shippers use the restored line.


Project Benefits• Help to maintain more than 200 jobs
• Minimize the added wear and tear on state roadways caused each year by 66,000 heavy truck loads
• Increased safety for freight rail service

What is the project timeline?
Four of the six projects are complete. The remainder are scheduled for completion in June 2005.


WSDOT continues to work with port districts, county governments, and rail-dependent shippers to collaborate on how to preserve this rail system for now and in the future.


Environmental Protection
Rail transportation per ton-mile requires less fuel and produces less pollution than other forms of transportation. This translates to significant fuel and pollution savings for farmers and end customers.

Please visit the WSDOT Environmental Services Web site for more information.

Increasing safety is one of our priorities
The track improvements will stabilize the track bed, making freight rail service safer and more reliable.

Will this project impact tribal resources?
Tribal consultation with the Nisqually Tribe and Puyallup Tribe will occur on this project.

Financial Information
$3.18 million is funded from the 2003 Legislative Transportation Package.

http://www.wsdot.wa.gov/NR/rdonlyres/73AADE76-66A6-4554-A44C-B57E1B01B972/0/TacomaRail_Morton.gif

King Street Renovations Continue

SEATTLE — Beginning this week workers will restore Seattle King Street Station's 98-year-old Compass Room entry hall to its original appearance. This work, sponsored by Amtrak and the Washington State Department of Transportation (WSDOT), is another step forward in the transformation of the busy and historic station.

"The Compass Room is one of the most beloved rooms in the station,” said Kurt Laird, Amtrak District Superintendent. “Though well-worn today, it has served as a welcome mat for millions traveling to Seattle during the past century. I can’t wait to see this room restored to its original beauty so it can more fittingly welcome the millions who will travel to Seattle by train in the next century.”

The Compass Room embodies many of the original finishes that remain in the station today. Non-historic features of the room will be removed and replaced with new materials that replicate the original materials and detailing. The only remaining original chandelier will be rebuilt and installed in the center of the Compass Room ceiling.

Other station upgrades starting soon include new exterior canopies and lighting, refurbishing the main entrance at Third Avenue and King Street, and restoring long boarded-up windows in the Waiting Room in keeping with the historic character of the station. This work will be completed by summer 2005.

Recently completed King Street Station construction increased the size of the Waiting Room and, for the first time in 40 years, visitors can experience some of the Waiting Room’s original architecture. The run down bathrooms also received a complete make over

In 2004 over 600,000 people passed through King Street Station, the busiest train station in the Pacific Northwest. The station is currently served by 14 daily Amtrak passenger trains and eight weekday Sounder commuter trains.

Willamette & Pacific wants to cut rail service on Benton line

Some shippers on a branch line south of Corvallis, Oregon will lose rail service under a proposal by the Willamette & Pacific.

The railroad, also known as the Portland & Western, said Thursday it would file for autority to discontinue service on a 16-mile segment of the Monroe branch. The affected segment runs from Greenberry Road south to Monroe and includes the spur from Alpine Junction to Dawson, site of the Hull-Oakes Lumber Co.

Larry Phipps, president of the railroad, said he had talked with shippers the day before and met with opposition to the request. He also has briefed Benton County Commissioner Linda Modrell, a strong supporter of rail service.

The track is nearly 100 years old and restricted to 7 miles an hour. The railroad had a derailment on the line on Mar08.

Phipps said the company would file to stop service with the federal Surface Transportation Board. He expects the Union Pacific, which owns the track leased by the W&P, to file at the same time for abandonment of the route.

Train service — two trains a week — is to continue until the federal board acts, which might take seven or eight months.

Wayne Giesy, a former part-owner of the Hull-Oakes mill and a vocal advocate of rail transport, said he would lead opposition to the railroad request.

"I told them they will have a hell of a fight," said Giesy, 85, of Philomath.

He blamed the railroad and its predecessors for letting the track get into "deplorable shape."

And he said it would be shortsighted to give up the right of way, which he thinks may one day be important if rail service to Eugene on the west side of the valley is ever to be restored to relieve the east-side corridor. The track on the south end of the branch to Eugene was removed years ago.

The move to discontinue service below Greenberry Road would affect Crocker Farms, Van Beek Dairy, Goracke Brothers, Wilbur Ellis, and on the Dawson branch, Nusbaum Farms and Hull Oakes, totaling some 455 carloads in 2004, mostly from the lumber mill.

Phipps said a loading station would be set up at Greenberry Road so shippers who wanted to connect to the rail network could load their goods there.

The Legislative Emergency Board granted the railroad $250,000 to fix the line in 2001 and the state added another $100,000 in 2003, Phipps noted, and those repairs were done.

Still, improving the entire track would require crossties and new rail on 15 miles, at a cost of $400,000 per mile for rail and ties.

He noted that elsewhere on its 530-mile regional system, the P&W last year had laid 32 miles of new track, replacing 75-pound rail with heavier gauge rail, such as 112 pounds per yard.

Just now, the railroad is replacing 20 miles of old track southwest of Albany on the old Oregon Electric line, which the P&W is leasing from the BNSF Railway Company. The BNSF is donating the rail, and the P&W is doing the installation. - Hasso Hering, The Albany Democrat-Herald, courtesy Larry W. Grant

CN, Maher Terminals and the Prince Rupert Port Authority to launch new container terminal


With $60 million in funding for the new Port of Prince Rupert container terminal now secured from the Canadian and British Columbia governments, the Canadian National Railway and Maher Terminals of Canada Corporation and the Prince Rupert Port Authority announced today plans to make the new terminal a reality in the first quarter of 2007.


CN has obtained approval from its board of directors to increase its financial contribution to the terminal to $30 million from $15 million. Of the $30 million total, $15 million will be spent on the intermodal yard at the port, $10 million on terminal trackage, and $5 million on infrastructure improvements to CN's B.C. North line so that it can accommodate double-stack container cars.

Maher Terminals of Canada Corporation has completed plans to proceed with a request for proposals in May 2005 for the acquisition and installation of three large container cranes at the terminal, together with supporting container handling equipment and technology, at a cost of approximately $60 million.

The Port of Prince Rupert is completing bank financing for its $25-million contribution to the container terminal development.

Phase 1 of the terminal development is expected to provide initial throughput capacity of 500,000 TEUs (twenty-foot equivalent containers) per year.

E. Hunter Harrison, president and chief executive officer of CN, said: “CN is excited with the progress being made toward launching the Prince Rupert container terminal in the first quarter of 2007. CN will be ready. It has the capacity, service and transit times to make Prince Rupert a true success. CN’s network will offer fast access from Prince Rupert to the key markets of Toronto, Montreal, Chicago and Memphis.”

Brian Maher, chairman and chief executive officer of Maher Terminals of Canada Corporation, said: “We’re forging ahead with our crane order and operating plan to be ready with our partners to start handling containerized goods through the port in the first quarter of 2007. Congestion at major ports along the west coast of North America remains a significant issue, and dialogue with the international steamship and shipping community indicates a real interest in using the Port of Prince Rupert for container traffic. We have a clear window of opportunity to put Prince Rupert on the world map.”

Don Krusel, president and chief executive officer of the Prince Rupert Port Authority, said: “The opening of this new terminal will not only bolster Canada’s international trading ability, but also create a new North American gateway for goods moving between Asia and the principal markets of Canada and the United States. This development will also deliver solid economic benefits to Prince Rupert and Northern British Columbia - Phase 1 of the project alone is expected to generate nearly 500 direct and indirect jobs.”

Phase 1 of the terminal project is part of a broader plan to build a facility capable of handling 2 million TEUs per year. - Mark Hallman, CN News Release, courtesy Larry W. Grant

Railroad is on a fiscal collision course

Year after year, Amtrak falls deeper into financial ruin. After 34 years — and 29 billion taxpayer dollars later — Amtrak’s mounting financial crisis has put the railroad on a collision course with failure.

But passenger rail service is too important, in too many parts of the country, to just stand by and watch a major mode of transportation strangle under a funding system that is fundamentally irrational. President Bush and I are determined to create a solid future for America’s passenger rail service, and we urge Congress to take swift action on the comprehensive reform proposal we have laid before them.

Amtrak was created in 1970 as a for-profit private company; however, escalating taxpayer bailouts are the only thing now keeping it afloat. Amtrak is the only transportation provider in the country relying on the routes, operations and general business practices developed over a quarter century ago. It has not evolved to meet the demands of today.

With its monopoly status, Amtrak has never been forced to face the realities of the marketplace. For intercity passenger rail to survive and flourish, we must create a system driven by sound economics, where prices and passengers — not politics — determine service.

Some states, recognizing Amtrak’s failures, have given up on the current system in favor of one that provides greater local control over train schedules, stations and customer service. However, under the present system, the federal government cannot provide any support to these states and their initiatives because most federal intercity passenger rail dollars go to Amtrak.

Our plan would create a federal-state partnership not unlike other federal transportation programs, which would allow states to decide what passenger rail service was needed and who would operate it. The federal government would provide a dollar-for-dollar match for track, train and station improvements, and let the states decide how and where to use the investments.

Amtrak would become a pure operating company under our plan, competing with other rail providers to run trains between cities designated by the states. Amtrak would be relieved of the burden of infrastructure upkeep, turning its focus to one thing — running the trains on time.

The answer to our intercity passenger rail problems is not throwing more money into a failed enterprise. The answer is top-to-bottom reform. The Bush administration has a plan to put intercity passenger rail service in America on a sustainable path for the future, where travelers can count on reliable, efficient and cost-effective service. - Opinion, Norman Y. Mineta, U.S. Secretary of Transportation, The Portland Tribune, courtesy Larry W. Grant

Board assured bridge is not a trick to bring light rail in

A new bridge across the Columbia River will not be used to sneak light-rail service into Clark County, Washington, highway officials promised Wednesday.

In a requested briefing on the estimated $1 billion bridge project, Oregon and Washington transportation leaders pledged there will be public debate on mass transit. One option, they said, could be a system of special lanes for express buses.

Light rail has been a Clark County hot button since voters rejected a train system 10 years ago. The topic comes up frequently even though C-Tran, the county's transit district, has denied any interest in linking to TriMet's light-rail system.

County commissioners asked for the briefing because two of the three board members took office in the past five months. Commissioner Steve Stuart also served in 2001-02 on a planning panel that suggested a new river crossing.

A series of task forces and partnerships have looked at the current Interstate 5 bridge and the freeway itself as a bottleneck for freight. The most recent study by a 28-member bi-state committee ended in 2002, with several options proposed.

Officials from the Washington State Department of Transportation, the Oregon Department of Transportation, and the Southwest Washington Regional Transportation Council, as well as Columbia River Crossing Project directors from the two states, came to answer questions.

Betty Sue Morris, chairwoman of the Board of County Commissioners, said light rail "is the most volatile issue" in this bridge-building process. She said all the drawings she has seen "include a substantial amount of steel to support light rail." She asked if that indicates decisions about light rail have been made without discussion.

Don Wagner, regional administrator for the Washington's Department of Transportation, responded that nothing has been decided.

"I know the federal transit agency will be at the table and will require a great deal of public discussion," he said.

Matt Garrett, regional administrator for Oregon's Department of Transportation, added, "That conversation will be robust, comprehensive and transparent. We will be dealing with sensitivities on both sides of the river."

Dean Lookingbill, director of the Southwest Washington Regional Transportation Council, said talks about the river crossing began in 1996, shortly after Clark County voters rejected light rail.

Lookingbill said the options now range from doing nothing, to a new crossing in downtown Vancouver, to opening a new freeway corridor through Camas or the Port of Vancouver. He said a new corridor farther east or west is unlikely.

The commissioners were shown a sample of possible river crossings. One featured a new highway and light-rail bridge immediately west of the existing Interstate Bridge set at Columbia Street, jogging to connect to the current freeway near the river; another had a bridge for light rail immediately west of the Interstate Bridge, and a new northbound highway bridge, with the existing bridges handling southbound freeway traffic plus carpool lanes.

In response to a question from Morris about sharing costs equally, Wagner said there will be a formal agreement reached soon between Washington and Oregon. He said the agencies are not paying on a matching schedule because the two states and the federal government are on different budget cycles.

Both Morris and Commissioner Marc Boldt also asked whether a test carpool lane in Vancouver will be made permanent or returned to general traffic. That carpool lane remains in use but no new monitoring has been done in more than a year because state and federal funding dried up. The test was to determine if a carpool lane would move more traffic than the freeway's other lanes. Not all of the goals are being met.

Lookingbill said the lane's fate will be discussed at a meeting Tuesday of the Regional Transportation Council. After that, the decision to keep or eliminate the lane will be made by state highway officials and the federal highway agency. Lookingbill said that process could take four to six months, drawing an expression of surprise from Boldt. - Bill Stewart, The Portland Oregonian, courtesy Larry W. Grant

Consultants release three streetcar plans


Consultants have released three proposed routes for a new Salem, Oregon streetcar system, part of a feasibility study presented to the Salem City Council this week.

All three routes wend through downtown Salem, coming within two blocks of as many city landmarks as possible. They range in length from 3.2 miles to 4.1 miles.

Members of the grass-roots Salem Streetcar Committee are concerned that the routes' price tags -- $55 million to $61 million, depending on length -- are too much, even if federal funds pay for as much as 80 percent of the project.

"You can't come in with a $62 million project and expect it to fly," said RoyJohn Balduc, a downtown jeweler who serves on the committee.

You have to go with a lower number."

Even as they begin searching for state and federal money for the project, committee members will consider alternatives for a shorter fourth route, he said.
However, coming up with a short route that serves a useful purpose will be tough, said Bonnie Nelson, a senior partner of Nelson/Nygaard Consulting Associates, the firm hired to draft the feasibility study.

"The trick is to build a starter line that goes somewhere, that does something, and generates some ridership," Nelson said.

When fully built, the proposed routes could serve 256,000 to 330,000 riders annually, the feasibility report estimates.

Two of the three proposed routes run from the Salem Railroad Station on 13th Street SE through downtown and up to North Broadway, which was chosen as a destination because of its redevelopment potential.

The third route loops from the Salem Civic Center through downtown to the Capitol Mall.

To draw sufficient ridership, the streetcars should run past locations at 15-minute intervals, the report said.

Although there is public support for running the streetcar to West Salem using the Willamette River railroad bridge, the consultants ruled that out as too expensive.

To get to West Salem, the trolley tracks would have to either be in a bridge over or on a tunnel under the railroad tracks that run along the west side of Front Street.

"We don't believe it's financially viable at this time," Nelson said.

The consultants said that if the streetcar system proves to be popular, extensions could be added to West Salem, Keizer, East Salem and other destinations.

The feasibility study cost $50,000 and was paid for jointly by the city, the Salem Downtown Association and Salem-Keizer Transit.

Proponents will have to continue to find local support if they want the project to move forward, said Jeff Hamm, the general manager of the transit district. That includes finding at least one major business to throw its weight behind the proposal.

"Unless there is a champion for this in the private sector, it isn't going to happen for a while," Hamm said. - Dennis Thompson, The Salem Statesman Journal, courtesy Larry W. Grant

King County trying to buy rail corridor for new trail (http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/localnews/2002276254_railtrail16e.html)

http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/ABPub/2005/05/15/2002276110.gif

King County has entered into exclusive negotiations with BNSF Railway to buy a 47-mile rail corridor stretching from Renton to Snohomish County for use as a trail.

If the county succeeds in acquiring the right of way, the new trail would cut through the heart of the Eastside's major cities and could tie into an existing urban-trail network to create a seamless, countywide recreational path.

"This is the pinnacle, the granddaddy of trails," King County Executive Ron Sims, who is leading the effort to acquire the route, said in an interview Friday. "This would become the spine of our system, and we think the public should own it."

Discussions about purchasing the line, which now carries the Spirit of Washington Dinner Train, began quietly about six months ago, said Sims, who planned to announce the talks today. He would not say how much the corridor would cost, except to say it could be purchased without raising taxes.

If the route became a trail, all rail traffic, including the dinner train, would cease on that line.

The negotiations come on the heels of the county's long-awaited success last week with the East Lake Sammamish Trail. After nearly a decade, and more than 20 lawsuits between the county and property owners, that controversial, 11-mile trail was finally approved.

The new trail, besides being a potential boon for recreationists, would almost certainly attract tourists, county planners say. The corridor would connect with the Sammamish River Trail, which in turn links to the Burke-Gilman. It would also tie into the Centennial Trail, which now runs from Snohomish to Arlington.When the trails are complete, an uninterrupted route could be possible from Renton to Skagit County.

(continued: click above link for full story)

wow, great thread, this is interesting stuff. I need to take amtrak from Pasco to Seattle one of these days, I'm going to go check out prices right now...

GVNY, do you know what route we would take for that? Stampede Pass?



EDIT: Nevermind, I would go down to Portland, then up to Seattle. All day trip, but it would still be fun.

WoW! I stopped updating this thread as I thought no one cared!

And no, you wouldn't take Stampede as of now. Someday you sure will. There are two ways you could get this trip done. The Gorge route via Vancouver or through Stevens, but I believe the Gorge is your best bet.

^Yeah. Did you take Amtrak from NY to Tacoma when you moved here?



You know what, I was reading up on Talgo, Inc. I never knew it was based in Seattle(as well as their american trains are assembled there. That's pretty cool. I was reading on their website that the Amtrak Cascades is #1 in costumer satisfaction and the fastest growing market in the states.

You'd think Talgo will grow because of this, and provide trains and services to other Amtrak routes. It already has a train running from Las Vegas to Los Angeles, so maybe it will become, like the premier passenger train maker in the states. :D

Amtrak's Talgo trains have a 99% satisfaction rate. That is extraordinary. They have had one faulter with her rail cars, and while embarrassed, they got the problem fixed immediately. (One problem with a rail car in many years of service is nothing to be embarrassed about, but to be expected.)

Amtrak could not have found a better partner.

And no, I did not take the train, I drove.

More updates on the Eastside BNSF line sale:

http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/ABPub/2005/05/16/2002277143.jpg

The Spirit of Washington dinner train crosses the Wilburton trestle in Bellevue on its way to Woodinville.

Put brakes on rail-to-trail plan, some say (http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/localnews/2002277561_railfollow17e.html)

King County's plan to turn 47 miles of Eastside and Snohomish County train tracks into a trail came as welcome news yesterday to some in the region but brought protests from supporters of the Spirit of Washington dinner train, which now uses the rails.

And some local officials said that while they support public ownership of the route, they wanted to know more about its costs, eventual use and how that would impact their cities.

Several dozen dinner-train employees marched into a news conference at Renton's Gene Coulon Memorial Beach Park, where the trail route would begin, carrying "Save the Train" signs and shouting in protest over King County Executive Ron Sims' formal announcement yesterday.

The county has entered into exclusive negotiations with BNSF Railway to buy the right of way for the 100-foot-wide route, which stretches from Renton to the city of Snohomish and now carries some freight as well as the dinner train.

If converted to a trail, it would become a major link in the county's recreation system, tying into other trails and one day possibly extending from South King County to Skagit County.

But the negotiations could bring an end to the dinner train's popular sightseeing trips.

"It's unacceptable," said Eric Temple, president of the dinner train, who said he'd known of the railway's interest in selling the line but was surprised by the county's recent negotiations.

Basically they're just saying "thanks for the memories. But I want to keep running the train. There's plenty of room for a trail, too," Temple said.

The train, which has about 80 full-time employees, has calculated its economic impact as $140 million over the past 13 years. It operates on a lease agreement with BNSF Railway; Temple said there are a couple years left on the current contract.

(continued: click above link for full story)



_______________________________________________________________________


Plan envisions Renton-to-Snohomish hiking/biking trail (http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/local/224599_newtrail17.html)

RENTON -- A proposal to turn 47 miles of railway into a hiking and biking route from Renton all the way to Snohomish would add an important link to a growing trail system.

But Spirit of Washington Dinner Train owner Eric Temple said yesterday that he was caught "flat footed" by news of King County Executive Ron Sims' plan.

"Which is surprising," Temple said. "You'd think the higher-ups in King County would give me a call if they're going to eliminate 80 jobs."

The stretch of track in question runs from Gene Coulon Memorial Beach Park in Renton north along Lake Washington to Bellevue, Kirkland and Woodinville.

King County would deal with the track's owner, Burlington Northern Santa Fe Railway, for a stretch of track that extends all the way to the city of Snohomish in Snohomish County, where the right of way already turns into a trail to the city of Lake Stevens.

That Burlington Northern Santa Fe wants to sell the old route is no secret. The railway offered it to the state Department of Transportation two years ago, but the state rejected that offer. There was talk at the time of using it for light rail, or maybe monorail, but no one stepped forward.

If a rails-to-trails sale to King County is negotiated and a trail is built, Sims said, it would create a north-south route all the way north to Skagit County and contribute to the improving system of local hiking and biking trails that now surround lakes Washington and Sammamish and are being developed in Snohomish County.

Any deal between the county and Burlington Northern Santa Fe would fall under the federal Rails to Trails Act, passed by Congress as a way to preserve rail corridors for possible future use.

Seattle's Burke-Gilman Trail and, more recently, the East Lake Sammamish Trail are examples.

(continued: click above link for full story)

Centralia Fights

Centralia and Chehalis are fighting to hold off Tacoma Rail's expansion into their town, as the right of way cuts through the middle of their cities, affectively rendering half the cities removed from medical services if train is passing through. More news soon.
By: GVNY

Amtrak needs your help to survive

By: TOM CONNOLLY

Every year thousands of travelers come to Oceanside on Amtrak's Pacific Surfliner and spend money in our community. Twenty-two trains pass through our downtown train station everyday. Four trains run between Oceanside and San Luis Obispo. This is a far cry from 1971, when, before Amtrak, just two trains a day ran between Los Angeles and San Diego, one train a day between San Francisco and Los Angeles, and a smattering of long-distance trains.

Amtrak now operates 70 intercity trains and over 200 commuter trains every day in California, with an annual ridership of 9.3 million. Amtrak employs 3,589 people in our state, paying $154.9 million in wages. Every year the company purchases goods and services in California, putting $30 million into our economy. Nationally, Amtrak had an all-time high of 25 million riders in 2004, including record ridership on the Pacific Surfliner. The vision of California rail planners is to increase intercity rail travel and thereby cut annual automobile miles traveled by 493 million, thus saving 10 million gallons of gasoline.

In spite of her success, Amtrak is falling victim to the disinformation campaign of Transportation Secretary Norman Mineta and the Bush White House.

Failing to see the connection between passenger rail service and energy conservation, the administration proposed zero funds for Amtrak in the 2006 budget and intends to shut down this vital rail system at a time when fuel costs are at record highs and highway congestion is worse than ever.

The administration argues that, "The Amtrak grant is a lot of money." The truth, however, is the annual grant is "one-twentieth of what the United States has spent this year alone so Iraqis could vote" (Great Falls Tribune, Feb. 6).

The administration contends that "Airlines and highway systems are self-supporting," but the truth is airlines and highways are subsidized by billions of taxpayer dollars, and every mass transportation system in the world requires some kind of government subsidy to survive. The last time I looked, neither I-5 or I-15 generated a profit.

According to the California Department of Transportation, $2.7 billion has already been invested in capital funding for intercity passenger rail service. Both the Coaster and Metrolink are operated by Amtrak, but this year the federal budget proposes no operating subsidy. This means the feds intend to transfer that burden entirely to the state. The administration appears intent on shifting the cost of passenger-rail service entirely to the state.

If the White House forces Amtrak into bankruptcy, California will experience severe disruption in intercity train service and will possibly lose it altogether. The people of this state need to send a clear signal to Washington that this state supports passenger rail service.

The best way to see our country, to appreciate its land, its beauty and its history, is to travel across it by rail. Unfortunately, 21st century politics is conducted as much by advertising campaigns as by the legislative process. The railroad has no organized advocacy groups to tell its side of the story, so those who support continued cross-country rail service must step up and lobby their own Congressional representatives to support appropriate continued funding for Amtrak, so passenger rail service is available for future generations.

Oceanside resident Tom Connolly represented the 77th district in the California State Assembly from 1992-94.

Amtrak headed toward bankruptcy

The Baltimore Sun


WASHINGTON - Amtrak executives on Thursday predicted that the railroad could go bankrupt within months, forcing serious service cuts and other drastic measures, unless it receives a significant budget boost from Congress.
``I think we will probably limp into next year, but by limp I mean we'll have like $20 million in the bank,'' David Gunn, Amtrak's president and CEO, said. ``At this point, we do not have a lot of options left to conserve cash.''

At a hearing before the Senate Appropriations subcommittee that oversees the railroad's budget, Gunn and David Laney, the chairman of the railroad's board, said they need $1.82 billion in fiscal year 2006 to hang on - an increase of more than 50 percent over this year's $1.2 billion budget.

Kenneth Mead, the inspector general for the Department of Transportation, supported their dire warn- ing.

He said Amtrak needs $1.4 billion or 1.5 billion in the next year just to stay alive.

``As time goes by, the limp-along system of today comes closer to a major failure,'' he said. ``Amtrak is, quite literally, coming to the end of its rope.''

But lawmakers offered little hope that the beleaguered rail service would receive such a cash infusion.

While sympathetic, they say it will be impossible to give Amtrak everything it says it needs.

``Our subcommittee finds itself in the posture of having to cut and cannibalize other programs - as we have never done before - only to see if we can scrape together enough funding from other programs to extend Amtrak for another 12 months,'' said Sen. Patty Murray of Washington, the top Democrat on the panel.

Downtown Transit Tunnel To Close For Construction



SEATTLE - Construction is about to begin in downtown Seattle to make way for a new transit system.

The Downtown Seattle Transit Tunnel will be closed for up to two years while it is retrofitted. Starting June 4, the tunnel will close on Saturdays and Sundays so crews can start the early retrofit work.

Then, starting Sept. 24 the tunnel will be shut down entirely until the project is finished.

When the tunnel is done it will be used by both buses and light rail.

"The tunnel was built 15 years ago and the original thought was that eventually it would accommodate rail, but technology has changed," explained Sound Transit Spokesman Ric Ilgenfritz. "15 years was a long time ago and so we need to go into the tunnel and make some upgrades to accommodate both the new buses that the agencies are using and the light rail vehicles that Sound Transit will be using."

King County Metro says bus riders won't be impacted, they'll simply have to exit the bus on the street level instead of inside the tunnel.

Drivers will notice some changes. Roughly 140 buses that usually use that tunnel now will be detoured onto city streets during rush hour. In addition, Third Avenue downtown will be closed to drivers and only open to bus traffic daily between 6-9 a.m. and 3-7 p.m.

There will be a public open house on May 25 to provide community members with information on project and the impact it will have on drivers. The open house will be held 11 a.m. - 2 p.m. at the Grand Hyatt Hotel located at 721 Pine Street.

Amtrak Cascades Announces Record Ridership in 2004
Amtrak Cascades announced record ridership of over 603,000 passengers during 2004—a 2.3 percent increase compared to last year. This is the tenth consecutive year of increased ridership aboard Amtrak Cascades.

The overall increase in Amtrak Cascades ridership is largely attributable to strong ridership from May through August, most notably between Bellingham, Seattle, and Portland. "We're pleased Amtrak Cascades ridership continues to remain strong," said Ken Uznanski, Manager, WSDOT Rail Office. "Passengers continue to comment on how affordable taking Amtrak Cascades is and the fact that they can relax, take in the scenery and enjoy their trip."

The Amtrak Cascades continues to rank near the top of Amtrak's 42-route national system for customer satisfaction. Features such as onboard movies, plug-ins for laptop computers, beautiful scenery, and the space for passengers to get up and move around continue to get rave reviews.

wow, great thread, this is interesting stuff. I need to take amtrak from Pasco to Seattle one of these days, I'm going to go check out prices right now...

GVNY, do you know what route we would take for that? Stampede Pass?



EDIT: Nevermind, I would go down to Portland, then up to Seattle. All day trip, but it would still be fun.
I would love to travel on 'The Cascades' Talgo train from Portland to Seattle and after a stopover, on to Vancouver, BC. Canada. Also it is pleasing that King St Station is having a makeover and getting rid of the 1960's crap. :)

Boy who found huge sinkhole under railroad tracks to be honored By Jamie Swift - Journal Reporter
2005-05-21

MAPLE VALLEY -- A potential train derailment was prevented by an 11-year-old boy who discovered a gaping hole beneath the tracks.

Whether the hole was the work of an ill-intentioned person or simply a natural collapse of the ground is under investigation, a spokesman for Burlington Northern Santa Fe Railway said.

Spencer Youngstrom, a fifth-grader at Glacier Park Elementary, will be honored by the city and its fire department Monday night for finding the hole and telling his dad about it.

Youngstrom's dad contacted the city, which led to the trains being stopped and the hole being repaired.

``The next train might have had a big problem,'' said Maple Valley Fire Lt. Matt Cowan, who was acting battalion chief that day.

City officials declined to divulge the reward Youngstrom will receive Monday at the City Council meeting, seeking to keep it a surprise for the boy.

Youngstrom found the hole over spring break, on April 12. He was with a friend, on his way to their fort, when he noticed the hole, measuring more than 6 feet deep and 3 feet in diameter.

Tom Bowen, a public works employee, followed the boys to the site of the hole. Upon seeing the hole, he immediately made a call to stop the trains scheduled to travel on the tracks.

BNSF workers responded and repaired the hole before the trains began running again.

``They were very appreciative,'' Cowan said of the BNSF workers. ``They said (the hole) could have caused a derailment.''

At least one train traveled over the hole, Cowan said. About 10 freight trains a day travel on the tracks through Maple Valley, carrying ``all sorts of things, including propane.''

This is all interesting stuff. Thanks GVNY.

The new Eastside trail should absolutely be built. It would be nothing short of a revolutionary change in peoples' ability to bike safely to work, for starters. I hope they can keep the dinner train also, but that's secondary.

I've long dreamed that the Amtrak Cascade route would get several more trains per day. Particularly helpful would be an express service to the three major downtowns, and possibly Downtown Tacoma also.

Amtrak Cascades celebrates the 10th anniversary of train service between Seattle and Vancouver, BC

Amtrak this month is celebrating the 10th anniversary of Cascades service between Seattle, Washington and Vancouver, British Columbia, by inviting travelers from both sides of the border to come enjoy one of the most scenic rail journeys in North America.

Amtrak’s Cascades service is one of the most popular trains, too. Launched in 1995, the train’s ridership has grown to 153,395 passengers in 2004.

The northbound train 510 departs Seattle at 07:45 arriving Vancouver BC at 11:40. The Southbound train 517 departs Vancouver B.C. at 18:00, arriving in Seattle at 22:05. This schedule allows for easy day trips or perfect weekend getaways.

Regular one-way adult fares between Seattle, WA and Vancouver, BC start as low as $24. Passengers may upgrade to Business Class for only a few dollars more each way and enjoy wider seats, more legroom, and priority boarding. Passengers are encouraged to purchase tickets early to obtain lowest fares. Reservations are required.

Upon arrival in Vancouver, BC passengers may visit historic Gastown, or Chinatown within walking distance, or a short taxi ride from the train station, located at 1150 Station Street. Passengers may also enjoy a weekend getaway and take the Vancouver- Seattle-Victoria triangle tour aboard the Amtrak Cascades, Victoria Clipper and the BC Ferry. Package information may be obtained from Visit Victoria Clipper at www.victoriaclipper.com or by calling 1-800-888-2535. For more on what to do upon arriving in Vancouver, BC by train, travelers may also visit www.tourismvancouver.com.

Located at 303 S. Jackson Street, the Seattle train station is within blocks of Safeco Field, art galleries, antique shops, boutiques, nightclubs, restaurants, and cafes. More information on what to do upon arriving in Seattle by train may be obtained by visiting www.seeseattle.org.

The Pacific Northwest Rail Corridor extends 466 miles from Eugene, Oregon to Vancouver, BC. Intercity service is provided in partnership with the states of Washington and Oregon. Travelers may visit www.AmtrakCascades.com or call 800-USA-RAIL for reservations and information. - Amtrak News Release, courtesy Larry W. Grant

Bremerton man killed on Kalama train trestle

A Bremerton, Washington man, whom sheriff's deputies declined to identify, was struck and killed by an Amtrak train about 20 feet from the end of the Kalama River trestle, Cowlitz County Sheriff's Office reported.

Deputies had not located the 28-year-old man's family, said Sheriff's Capt. Mark Nelson Sunday night. Deputies did not know why the man was on the trestle, he said.

Fishermen who were on the bank of the Kalama River told deputies that they and the man were chatting when they saw the southbound train around 11:00, Nelson said. The man ran southbound away from the train but the train caught up with him just before the end of the trestle, the witnesses told deputies.

The man was thrown about 100 feet from the point of impact, Nelson said.

The man died instantly of massive bodily trauma, he said. The coroner's office is planning to do a toxicology report on the man.

BNSF Railway Company spokesman Gus Melonas said the track was closed for a little more than an hour during the investigation. There were no other injuries, and the Seattle-to-Portland passenger train continued after an hour, he said.

Melonas said that the railroad is still investigating the accident.

The fatal accident occurred almost exactly a year after a group of family and friends were struck by a freight train on a trestle near Woodland on Memorial Day 2004. Arin Kight, 33, and Ashley Falk, 12, both of Ridgefield, WA, died in that accident, and three other children were injured. - Venice Buhain, The Longview Daily News, courtesy Larry W. Grant

ouch.

Rail Work


CTC between Spokane St/Argo and Black River finished, CTC from King Street Station to TR Jct finished.

Passenger siding/Third Main from MP21x (Auburn North) to MP25x (Ellingson/Pacific Crossovers) slated to start in 2008 or when the need for all Sounder Commuter Rail trains to run (Note: There will be 2 midday Sounder trains starting in 2009 and 2 morning Sounder trains to Tacoma in 2009)

Third Main between TR Jct and 21st St along with the curve adjustment at D St slated to start this summer.

After that project is finished, an 2 lane overpass will be installed over D st as part of the F.A.S.T Corridor project. Original road way access to Museum of Glass and continuing down D st will be available once overpass is completed.

The crossovers at Harbor/McCarver St are finished and activated.

The crossovers at Titlow/MP10 are nearing completion.

The Point Definance to move the Amtrak Cascades and Sounder Commuter trains on the Lakewood Subdivision *Name will be changed after ST takes the line over* Construction on that line is slated to start in 2008, Sounder will be running on the line in 2009 with Amtrak Cascades in late 2009. Line will be CTC, single track with 3000 foot passing sidings with a Max speed of 65 to 79mph

Rail Work

Maintenance crews on the Union Pacific Railroad will be doing work on the track between Portland and Eugene from Yesterday, the 1st through Aug. 2.
The work requires 10-hour work periods when train service is suspended, according to ODOT. The planned work schedule: June 1-8, June 16-23, July 1-7, July 16-23 and Aug. 1 and 2.
During that time, the Amtrak Cascades terminate in Portland and passengers will be bused to Oregon City, Salem, Albany/Corvalis and Eugene. The Starlight will be delayed but will possibly be allowed to travel through MOW areas at a restricted speed. Also, BNSF's train 664, from Salem to Vancouver will run up the Portland & Western OE District to Tigard and then run over the Tillamook into Brooklyn to avoid traffic and maintenance.

Saving the Empire Builder (http://www.dailyinterlake.com/articles/2005/06/01/news/news04.txt)

The Daily Inter Lake

Making trains run on time with greater cost and service efficiency is the motive for Amtrak "reform," according to U.S. Transportation Secretary Norman Mineta, but Montana Gov. Brian Schweitzer doesn't see it that way at all.
"This is not a reform proposal," Schweitzer said in response to a Tuesday teleconference in which Mineta explained the Bush administration's plans for Amtrak. "This is a proposal to kill Amtrak. Nothing more and nothing less. And we're against it."

But Mineta bluntly rejected any claim that the administration wants to "kill Amtrak," saying the passenger rail service is on course to an eventual natural death.

"Frankly, if that were the case, I would do nothing," he said. "Because what is happening is Congress is going to find it more and more difficult to come up with the money ... to try to shoehorn [Amtrak] money into their budget each year."

The administration budget plan has zero funding for Amtrak.

As an alternative to keep the railroad alive, Mineta said, the administration is proposing a cost-share program in which the federal government and participating states would split funding responsibility 50-50, giving states more input in shaping efficient rail systems that meet their respective needs.

"There really ought to be more state, local involvement" with passenger rail services, Mineta said. "What we're trying to do with the reform legislation is to have legislation that makes both economic sense and transportation sense."

Since Amtrak was established in 1971, it has been a

habitual financial loser that has failed to meet capital maintenance needs, often runs late, and has failed to adjust its operations to meet public demands, he said.

Since 1971, "the federal government has poured a little over $30 billion into the system," Mineta said. "And as I look at it, I'm not sure what we have to show for the $30 billion we've poured into it."

Amtrak's Empire Builder, which traverses Montana's Hi-Line, lost more than $8 million last year, while nationwide Amtrak operated at a loss of $75 million last year, Mineta said.

The Empire Builder serves just 3.5 percent of the state's population since it passes well north of the state's largest cities, and it passes through just once a day in each direction, running late 30 percent of the time, Mineta said.


___________________________________________

Hmm, $8,000,000 short a year? The Empire Builder passes through 7 states; that's a subsidy of $1,000,000 per state if the feds chip in $1,000,000. The states need to get more involved in preserving & promoting this historic & scenic line. And folks who treasure this line need to ride it more. I am planning on purchasing a vacation home in the Newport-Sandpoint area or the Flathead Valley & use the Empire Builder to transport me back & forth from the Puget Sound area.

Here is a picture of the recently refurbished Amtrak station in Whitefish, MT:

http://www.bigskyfishing.com/Montana-Info/Pictures/whitefish/train-depot-640.jpg (http://www.bigskyfishing.com/Montana-Info/galleries/whitefish/train-station.shtm)

what annoys me about the cascades service is that it is not really useful to vancouver people, as to do the trip to seattle for the day, they have to drive an hour to bellingham, as only one train goes through all the way to vancouver; the rest stop in bellingham. Also, it may not be a good move scenery wise, but perhaps it would be better if the line were to run up through abbotsford instead of running through white rock. This way there could be a canadian station in the valley. Also in this case the terminus could be the harbour station which is a bit better located right in downtown...

First on the Empire Builder: It would make much more sense to put this train on the Stampede line as it was routed before they closed the line in the late 80's. The 80's 'Builder hit all the major cities in Washinton, while the current hits desolate farmland. And for saving the Empire Builder, I don't know. I think Amtrak will faulter, and so will cross Cascade rail, until some other alternative can be created.

And for the Cascade service: I agree it is not suited for Vancouver commuters, as it was not put in place for commuting, as evident by the one train that actually enters the city. Vancouver was only added as a special "day" destination. And your idea about Abbotsford is very logical, but I don't believe Amtrak will make this change unless Amtrak sees a real profitable need for commuter service into B.C. Until then, it will remain a day trip/ vacation destination.

Hmm, $8,000,000 short a year? The Empire Builder passes through 7 states; that's a subsidy of $1,000,000 per state if the feds chip in $1,000,000. The states need to get more involved in preserving & promoting this historic & scenic line. And folks who treasure this line need to ride it more. I am planning on purchasing a vacation home in the Newport-Sandpoint area or the Flathead Valley & use the Empire Builder to transport me back & forth from the Puget Sound area.


Unless scenic rail becomes popular again, the Empire Builder will faulter. It just treads through nowhere. The NP line would be more suitable for this train, and Amtrak agrees.

But of course, all of our trains should be going through the defunct Snoqualmie Tunnel on their way to Seattle, as this is undisputably the best rail profile in the Cascade Mountains, not counting the Gorge. Carelessness decisions by the BN altered the course of Northwest railroading.

^ The Great Northern line from Everett to the Marias Pass in MT is tough to top for scenic beauty & grandeur. Plus for rail nuts, it passes through both the Cascade & Flathead tunnels & only travels above the 4,000 ft altitude mark for only 55 miles total.

East of that, the NP line is better. Maybe they could extend a line down from Marias Pass to Helena to reach the old NP line East through Bozeman, Livingston (Yellowstone NP), Billings, etc.

Seattle Times travel section, 6/3 - Climb aboard for an easy trip from Seattle to Chicago (http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/travel/2002295825_traintrip05.html)

http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/ABPub/2005/05/28/2002291513.jpg



Bring your own pillow — and make the trip this month or next, if you can.

Those are my two key pieces of advice to anyone considering traveling on the Empire Builder, Amtrak's train between here and Chicago. Sitting in a seat aboard the Empire Builder is, to my mind, by far the most relaxing way to see the Cascade Range, the Rocky Mountains, the high plains of Montana and the upper Mississippi River valley. On the train there's no need to keep your eyes on the road, as you would in a car. And there's no need to break into a sweat, as you would on a hike.

Whether you're traveling in coach or in a sleeping berth, it helps if you've brought your own fluffy pillow (Amtrak's pillows aren't made of plastic foam, but they're not the last word in hotel luxury either). And the reason for going in June or July is: light, light, light. With skies staying bright, or at least dusky, until 9:30 p.m. or so, you naturally see more than you would at any other time of year. On a Tuesday afternoon, an hour before the Empire Builder's scheduled 4:45 p.m. departure, I arrived at King Street Station — now being renovated to its old stately glory, after decades of dropped-ceiling-tile grunginess.

I'd traveled in coach in the past, but was lucky enough to get a sleeping berth this time (when traveling in summer, be sure to reserve your berth well ahead of time). Coach seats on the long-run Amtrak trains are much roomier than any airline seat, and they recline like lounge chairs. But you still can't lie completely flat in them when it comes time to sleep. Depending on your budget — and on whether you're feeling young and supple, or old and arthritic — the extra money it costs to get a standard room may be worth it to you. For the additional $900 I paid, I got, bunk beds for two (in very snug quarters), free meals for two (except for alcoholic drinks) and access to a shower.

The shower is a big deal. I've made three- and four-day trips across the United States by train where, by day three, I would have committed unconscionable acts — or at least paid $50 — for access to one.

The "standard room" is all yours once you pay for it, whether you're on your own or traveling with a companion. It has curtains that close and a sliding door that locks, thus averting situations like that of Claudette Colbert in "The Palm Beach Story," in which she keeps stepping on Rudy Vallee's nose and breaking his glasses as she tries to reach her upper bunk. Larger rooms are also available, at a higher price.

Into the Cascades

At King Street Station, sleeping-car passengers were boarded half an hour before departure, and coach passengers shortly thereafter. The train pulled out at exactly 4:45 — and immediately Seattle became a place I was visiting instead of a place where I lived.

With a smooth bobbing motion along the rails and an occasional clackety-bump, the train served up glimpses of Elliott Bay (between Alaskan Way condos) and Myrtle Edwards Park. To the west, a cloud procession over Puget Sound looked like an airborne archipelago, with major islands, minor shoals, and bays and inlets of blue sky in between.

The train follows the water as far as Everett, and then turns inland, following the Snohomish River and later the Skykomish. As you approach the Cascades, National Park Service rails-and-trails guides start broadcasting information on where you're going (you can turn down the sound, if you want). I was intrigued to learn that in the old days of the Great Northern Railroad (now part of the Burlington Northern-Santa Fe network) a greenhouse in Monroe supplied all the flower arrangements for the dining cars en route between Seattle and Chicago.

The more remote you get, the more arresting the sights you see: houses isolated in deep woods or perched in a bunch on riverside cliffs, far from any visible road. And, always, Mysteriously Parked Cars — vehicles abandoned by the tracks or on dirt-road cul-de-sacs, looking as though they might never be reclaimed. (This is a bit of an illusion: Route 2 is somewhere nearby, but out of sight.)

You can feel the train labor as it gains elevation. It doesn't speed along here, and you wouldn't want it to, for the ascent into the Cascades is one of the highlights of the trip. As the train crosses and recrosses the Skykomish, you get a taste of forest gloom and then re-emerge into bright river view. Mount Index looms above the tracks, and other peaks with their snow fields come into sporadic view. Vertigo-inducing drops appear off the left side of the train as it crosses trestles and climbs up toward Stevens Pass. Alpine meadows appear above.

The tracks used to go higher, but now they peak at 2,881 feet inside the 7.79-mile-long Cascade Tunnel, built in 1925-28 to make the route less vulnerable to avalanches in winter. Out its other side, you briefly rejoin Route 2, then veer off into Chumstick Valley before following the banks of the Wenatchee River and entering orchard country. Towns that are just roadside-sign names from Route 2 — Peshastin, Dryden — are fully visible from the train. It's somewhere just past them that you come to the point where you can confidently say: The rain stops here.

By the time we pulled into Wenatchee — the first "smoking stop," in which you can get out and stroll along the platform — the air had changed its scent from damp to dry and from fir to sagebrush. The temperature was warmer; the sky was still light.

Half an hour later, as the train rattled past basalt formations along the banks of the Columbia River, summer dusk gave way to a full moon, making the water shine like night-metal.

Strangers on a train

There were, of course, people on the train. In the dining car, unless you're in a party of four, you find yourself eating with strangers, and usually they're a mixed bag. You never know whom you're going to get.

On the way to Chicago, everyone I met at mealtimes seemed to be morbidly obese, or clobbered by disease (skin cancer, lung cancer, diabetes, aneurysms), or bitterly conservative, or planning an elaborate prayer schedule for all those around them who were doing so poorly. Even the young woman traveling with her sister in the sleeping-car room across from me kept talking (to her sister's pointedly mute response) about her sinus infections, migraines, colon treatments and general overall decrepitness.

"Mom's side of the family became disabled real fast," she said, almost with pride. "Or not real fast, but real young." And then she wondered aloud whether it was better to have a sound body and a failing mind or a failing body and a sharp mind.

On the way back, things couldn't have been more different. People, young and old, were savoring the trip. They showed some curiosity about their fellow passengers, and they didn't necessarily think that The New York Times was a left-wing conspiracy. (I did note, however, that, unlike earlier trips, hardly anyone brought up politics — as though the state of the country had become too touchy a subject, with too many polarized opinions floating around, to be addressed at mealtimes.)

The Chicago-bound Amtrak staff were laboring under difficulties, too. Some of the kitchen crew hadn't turned up, and the dining car was operating with only one chef and one dish washer for the first night. (Reinforcements were flown in to meet the train at Spokane late on Tuesday night, and days two and three of the trip went much more smoothly.) For that reason, only two dinner entrees (neither of them a vegetarian dish) were available Tuesday night. Passengers complained, but the crew did their best to keep things going smoothly, cracking jokes and soothing bad tempers.

On the return trip, everything ran like clockwork, as far as I could tell. But that may have been because I started going to earlier meal sittings after I heard that the kitchen ran out of certain menu selections toward the end of mealtime. The food itself was fair, not great by Seattle restaurant standards. One exception: The apple pie was amazing. And the cheesecake wasn't bad either. The Callaway Coastal Merlot was the tastiest of the wine offerings. (Cultural difference note: On the Seattle-to-Los-Angeles Coast Starlight, almost everyone has wine with dinner. On the Empire Builder, I was almost always the only one at my table.)

"A quantum leap"

The unpredictable motion of the train proved a reliable source of Amtrak staff joke material. The Chicago-bound dining car steward — an impressive African-American woman with a bleach-blonde crew cut and an air of hefty, cheerful, law-enforcing authority about her — made a wisecracking allusion to the classic Fats Waller song, "(What Did I Do To Be So) Black and Blue," after she was bounced with vigor against a dining-car table. "This is why I'm so black and blue," she declared.

My sleeping car porter, Larry, was just as much of a character. When the National Park Service's rail-and-trail guides started their train-trip narration, he warned me, "Sometimes they get overzealous and start too early in the morning. People get really ticked, so I click them off."

He was meticulous about announcing each smoking stop — no doubt because he was just as eager as his nicotine-addicted passengers to be out on the platform smoking a cigarette. Almost all of the crew, to my surprise, were smokers.

Larry's grandfather had been a railroad man, but Amtrak was just the latest of Larry's careers. He had worked for the U.S. Department of Commerce and Department of Defense. Amtrak, he said, "was the one last thing I wanted to try."

After he retired from Amtrak, he figured, he'd move to Sandpoint, Idaho, where his wife would work as a real-estate agent and he would be her gofer. He looked forward to having "five good years where I won't have to think." That seemed a pity, because the routine he launched into outside Williston, N.D. — where the train was traveling on Central time, but the dining car was clinging to Mountain time — was one of the intellectual high points of the trip.

"We have made," he said to one very confused passenger, "a quantum leap."

Comments on quantum theory aside, he also took good care of his sleeping-car passengers. When I started unfolding my two seats into a bed, he stepped right in and took over from me: "Better for me to pinch my fingers than you."

The first night, I have to admit, I didn't sleep all that well. It's amazing how a motion that seems nothing out of the ordinary while you're sitting up can seem so crazily turbulent when you're lying down.

The next day, Larry had suggestions. He'd noticed that I'd been sleeping with my head toward the front of the train, and he suggested I try it the other way around. He also said that if you're rattling along in the dark and can't sleep because of the movement, you should touch your toe to the wall of the compartment or the side of the bed. "It kind of anchors you," he said.

I tried both suggestions the next night, and surprisingly they worked. I was also surprised by how easy it was, while reading or gazing out the window, to drift off into a nap while sitting up.

Landscape Tyranny Syndrome

But at first I did no napping or reading, thanks to something I call Landscape Tyranny Syndrome. It wasn't just Puget Sound, the Cascades and that late-dusk glimpse of the Columbia River that made for spellbinding views. When I woke up on the second day of the trip, I found myself approaching Whitefish, Mont., with all of Glacier National Park ahead of me. The train followed the southern border of the border, giving views of grandly sloping mountain ranges quite different in character from the abrupt canyons and chasms of the Cascades.

East of Spokane, a sightseer lounge becomes part of the train and lets you look up at mountain peaks as well as out at mountain bases. (The Empire Builder, at its western end, consists of two trains that join together in Spokane. The one from Portland, which follows the north shore of the Columbia Gap, has the sightseer car. The one from Seattle has the dining car.)

It feels almost immoral to look away from such stunning scenery. As you approach the continental divide, Rocky Mountain forest gives way to more open meadow, with jagged, snow-covered peaks up above. Stunted firs and aspens make it clear that you're nearing the tree line. Snow sheds protect the track from avalanches. Looking across the valley, you can see the paths of old avalanches down the forest slope.

At East Glacier Park, it was tempting to disembark. Glacier Park Lodge, with the Rockies as its backdrop, is just a few hundred yards from the platform. The building has the same rustic elegance as Lake Quinault Lodge or Mt. Hood's Timberline Lodge. But, alas, Amtrak's booking system doesn't allow for impromptu changes of plan. If you ditched the train and wanted to get back on board a few days later, you'd need to buy a new ticket. (The one exception: If you are stricken with serious illness and have to interrupt your journey, Amtrak will find room for you on the next train you're able to take. One elderly woman I met whose husband had to be hospitalized in Havre, Mont., said Amtrak's staff went out of their way to help the couple handle their emergency.)

And besides there were still more splendid sights to see up ahead. The Great Plains, as they approach the Rockies from the east, are anything but flat. In fact, they seem like a turbulent, rising tide of grassland that might just, with another few hundred feet, swamp the mountains themselves.

As the train rattled along toward North Dakota, I could see "dress rehearsals" for the Rockies: stranded mountain ridges — Bear Paw Mountain to the south, Alberta's Cypress Hills to the north — that rose like blue islands from the oceanlike plains. There were also more Mysteriously Parked Cars — a whole bunch of them this time, with no road (this is easier to ascertain than it had been in the Cascades, because there were no trees in the way) anywhere near them.

Even the moon looks different

It took all day to get across Montana. There were more smoking stops, in small towns with quaint rail depots. In Shelby, Mont., there also were not-so-quaint-looking taverns on either side of the tracks, trying to attract customers with offers of pool, poker, Keno, beer, a grill and a liquor store all in one package.

Toward evening of day two, the train crossed into North Dakota. Here, right on the state line, stands a reconstruction of the old Western army outpost, Fort Union, with half a dozen tepees arrayed to one side. Here, too, the Milk River, coming down from Canada, joins the Missouri. You occasionally get a glimpse of the Missouri when it oxbows up to the train tracks. But then, east of Williston, N.D., it heads south, while the train keeps going east, crossing a north-south continental divide. While the Missouri joins the Mississippi to empty into the Gulf of Mexico, North Dakota's Souris and Red River watersheds feed, ultimately, in to Hudson Bay.

The landscape was more domesticated, more agricultural. The sprinklers that make those huge, irrigated circles of green you can see from airliners revealed themselves to be the mechanical equivalent of a daddy longlegs: fragile, skeletal limbs extending several hundred feet from a vertical axle, with many little wheels supporting them and leaving concentric trails in the dirt.

After sunset, I caught sight of a strange, round building on the horizon, still burnished by the fading evening light. I wondered what on earth it could be. Surely anything that large would be famous in North Dakota, even if it was supposed to be a military secret.

It took me several minutes to realize it was the moon rising, full and dark orange, above the plains.

An alternate existence?

There's never a time of year when it stays light late enough — or gets light early enough — for passengers to tell at what point the open farmland of the plains turns to eastern forest.

When you wake up, you're already in wooded Minnesota and the upper Mississippi River valley. This Mississippi valley is one of the lesser-sung splendors of the trip: another stretch where Landscape Tyranny Syndrome kicks in.

Click here (http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/travel/2002295825_traintrip05.html) for rest of article.

^ The Great Northern line from Everett to the Marias Pass in MT is tough to top for scenic beauty & grandeur. Plus for rail nuts, it passes through both the Cascade & Flathead tunnels & only travels above the 4,000 ft altitude mark for only 55 miles total.

East of that, the NP line is better. Maybe they could extend a line down from Marias Pass to Helena to reach the old NP line East through Bozeman, Livingston (Yellowstone NP), Billings, etc.

Stevens Pass is gorgeous, and is the primary reason I work out of Washington. I love taking freights up "the hill" as my co-workers call it. Cascade tunnel is a bitch though.

The Great Northern line is by far the most scenic of the rail lines into the northwest, but then again, is stung by stiff grades and the Cascade tunnel. Amtrak cannot continue using this line. The GN route does not serve any major cities other than Tacoma, Seattle, and Spokane. The NP line hits Yakima, the Tri Cities, Seattle, Tacoma and Spokane, along with scenery, that in some areas, can be better than Stevens. NP makes much more sense.

^ Tri-Cities is already served via the Spokane-Portland line. Dumping the GN line just for Yakima doesn't make that much sense IMO since the utility of long distance snail rail in the future isn't for primary travel but more for leisure & sight seeing. People will be riding the train for Leavenworth & Icicle Canyon more than Yakima & the Kittitas Valley.

Amtrak will undoubtedly be placed on the Stampede line once she is completely reopened, if for no other reason than that BNSF doesn't want Amtrak on Stevens Pass.

And the Tri-Cities "served?" Hardly. They are just a whistle stop for trains heading to Portland or Spokane. I don't believe many people will exchange trains at Portland and Spokane to get to the Tri-Cities.

And for trains to Leavenworth, I don't know how popular that is, but maybe a special train will be enough to serve the area, including Wenatchee.

Reducing train speed may work at University of Washington

Seattle, Washington's Sound Transit light rail trains running in a tunnel underneath sensitive University of Washington research buildings would produce acceptable vibration levels if they slow to 30 mph rather than the planned 55 mph, a study concluded.

In April, the University of Washington raised alarms after being told by Sound Transit that vibrations from the trains might affect 11 campus buildings, including the key Bagley Hall chemistry building, rather than the three to five buildings promised earlier in an environmental impact statement.

The UW said that was a serious problem that needed to be solved.

Sound Transit did further studies of what the impact might be if it placed the tracks on a floating slab, used exceptionally straight rail, and lowered the speed to 30 or 35 mph. The latest study -- handed over to the UW about a week ago -- found that vibration levels at the lower speeds would affect only three to five buildings and would not affect Bagley.

"This is good news for us," said Theresa Doherty, assistant vice president at the UW.

Sound Transit is building a 16-mile light rail line from downtown to the Sea-Tac Airport and is planning to extend that from downtown north to Northgate, via First Hill, Capitol Hill and the University District. However, the agency does not yet have money to pay for the extension northward.

Ahmad Fazel, Sound Transit's light rail director, said slowing the trains to 30 mph for the 2,000 feet under the campus would add about 30 to 40 seconds to travel time. That's equivalent to adding a station stop to the line, he said.

Slowing trains will be the last resort, Fazel said. The studies are just predictions. It's possible that when the trains are up and running, the agency will be able to achieve an acceptable level of vibrations without slowing the trains to 30 mph, he said.

The UW and Sound Transit continue negotiations over a memorandum of agreement on aspects of building and operating the line on UW property. It also covers electro-magnetic interference from running trains and issues such as the 600-plus parking spaces construction workers will need on campus. - Jane Hadley, The Seattle Post-Intelligencer, courtesy Larry W. Grant

The Port of Tacoma has selected John Wolfe as Deputy Executive Director

Wolfe, 40, is currently Executive Director at the Port of Olympia. He is a native of Puyallup, Washington and a graduate of Tacoma's Pacific Lutheran University (B.A. in Business Administration, 1987).

Port of Tacoma Executive Director Timothy J. Farrell says Wolfe brings a collaborative leadership style to Tacoma. "We have known John for many years and respect his ability to build teams and lead an organization," he said. "As our Port grows, it is important to bring people with John's capabilities into our organization. He will be an asset for our customers, our staff and our community."

Before being named Port of Olympia Executive Director in December 2003, Wolfe served as Olympia's Director of Operations and Marine Terminal General Manager. Prior to joining the Port of Olympia in 2000, he spent 10 years with Maersk Sealand/APM Terminals in Tacoma, most recently as the terminal's Operations Manager.

"John's experience will serve him well at the Port of Tacoma," Farrell said. "He has first-hand knowledge of the day-to-day challenges our customers face and an in-depth understanding of their business needs."

According to Port of Olympia Commission President Bob Van Schoorl, Wolfe leaves the Port of Olympia in great shape after four years of growth in both Port business and in community economic development.

"We are very disappointed to see John leave, but this is a great opportunity for him and his family," Van Schoorl said. "John has brought a lot to the Port of Olympia, and we thank him for his leadership. However, we have an excellent management team and a great staff who have also contributed significantly to our success. The Port of Olympia will continue to move forward and grow vigorously."

In addition to his experience in the maritime industry, Wolfe spent two years as a computer systems analyst for The Boeing Company.

The offer from the Port is contingent upon successful completion of a standard background check and physical exam. - Mike Wasem, Port of Tacoma

Sounder adds another train to north route

By Eric Pryne
Seattle Times staff reporter

Sound Transit's leaders may feel a glow of accomplishment when a second round-trip Sounder commuter train debuts today between Everett and Seattle.

But they also will face a moment of truth.

Ridership on the 18-month-old Sounder North line has been anemic, attracting only 150 or 160 round-trip commuters on a typical workday. That's about half what Sound Transit forecast when service began.

The agency's top managers have blamed the train's troubles mostly on its limited schedule: one trip south to Seattle in the morning, one trip north to Everett at night. That's too inflexible to fit most commuters' lives, they've said, contending that if they had more trains, they could draw more riders.

Starting today, they will find out if they were right.

"I think the reaction to the second train will be a real harbinger of what's in store," says Everett City Councilman Mark Olson, who also is a vice chairman of the Sound Transit board. "It will give a pretty good indication of the usefulness of this mode of transportation, whether the market is there."

Low ridership isn't the only problem that has plagued the 35-mile Sounder North line.

It began running three years later than planned. Capital costs, including right-of-way, have nearly quadrupled, to $385 million, since voters approved the project as part of the "Sound Move" package of regional rail and bus projects in 1996. Potential riders in Mukilteo still are waiting for a promised station.

Only Sound Transit's Seattle light-rail project has been attacked more fiercely by the agency's critics.

"This is not cost-effective transit at all," Maggie Fimia of the Coalition for Effective Transportation Alternatives says of Sounder North.

The line's supporters counsel patience.

"This is a long-term investment," says Bruce Agnew of the Discovery Institute, a Seattle think tank. "The population is continuing to explode up north."

He and other backers have been heartened in recent weeks by two rays of good news: Sound Transit announced last month that the second train, originally scheduled to begin carrying passengers in September, would start running three months earlier.

And just last week officials said it looks like they can begin serving Mukilteo by mid-2007, six months to a year earlier than planned.

But Sounder North's troubles aren't all in the past. Sound Transit is counting on the addition of two more round-trip trains in December 2007 to meet long-term ridership goals. The agency now acknowledges that, because of unforeseen delays in getting environmental permits, there's a high risk that schedule will slip.


Back at the table


The new problem is rooted in the agreement Sound Transit and Burlington Northern Santa Fe (BNSF) signed in December 2003 after years of negotiations.

It gives the transit agency the right to eventually run four trains — down from six promised in Sound Move — on the railroad's tracks. In return, BNSF gets $258 million. That's much more than Sound Transit forecast in the mid-1990s, and it's the chief reason the project's costs have soared.

To accommodate the Sounder trains, BNSF plans to add a second, parallel track along several stretches where now there is just one. In some places Puget Sound beaches and wetlands will be filled to provide a roadbed for the new track.

That requires permits from state and federal environmental agencies — permits that, per the agreement, Sound Transit must obtain for BNSF.

But the agreement also says the transit agency can't start operating the third and fourth trains until two years after it gets permits for the fill along Puget Sound. To hit its December 2007 start date, Sound Transit needs those permits by the end of this year.

That won't happen, says Agnes Govern, Sound Transit's capital-projects director; the permit applications won't even be submitted until later this summer.

Sound Transit was ready to apply last December, she says, but as BNSF refined its construction plans, it determined that another acre of shoreline fill would be needed to protect the new roadbed from erosion.

That meant Sound Transit had to revise the applications and come up with new plans to mitigate the extra environmental impact.

Eric Stockdale of the state Department of Ecology, one of the agencies responsible for issuing the permits, praises Sound Transit for reducing the amount of fill for the project to just a few acres. "I don't think we are looking at an unpermittable project," he says.

But Stockdale couldn't estimate how long it would take his agency to act once the applications are filed.

Meanwhile, Sound Transit is back at the table with BNSF, seeking a new agreement that would allow the third and fourth trains to start operating on schedule in December 2007. Neither party would discuss details.


"We overestimated"


When the first Sounder North train started operating just before Christmas in 2003, Sound Transit forecast the new line would carry 175,000 one-way riders in 2004.

Three months later, with ridership lagging, a spokesman admitted that goal was out of reach.

To attract more riders, a year ago Sound Transit moved the morning train's departure time back 15 minutes so riders could more easily get to their downtown Seattle jobs by 8 a.m. In October it kicked off a promotion that allows commuters to use Sound Transit passes to ride Amtrak trains between Everett, Edmonds and Seattle.

Despite those tweaks, weekday ridership remained flat. Just 97,000 one-way passengers took the train last year — and 20,000 of them weren't weekday commuters, but sports fans on special trains bound for weekend football and baseball games.

Operating expenses per passenger topped $40 per one-way trip.

Marty Minkoff, Sound Transit's transit-services director, says the 175,000-rider projection wasn't highly scientific. "We overestimated the utility of having just one train," he says.

Based on that experience, the agency has scaled back its ridership forecasts for the next few years. Eighteen months ago it projected 200,000 one-way riders in 2005, and 250,000 in 2006.

Now it forecasts 125,000 riders this year, 175,000 next. The Sound Move goal of 600,000 annual riders has been pushed back from 2010 to 2011; critics say that's still unrealistic.

Minkoff says the second train should boost ridership about 12 percent over the summer, 15 percent by next June. He's also counting on upcoming construction on Interstate 5 to create congestion and nudge more commuters toward the train.

The state Department of Transportation plans to start building high-occupancy-vehicle lanes through Everett in September. "This is just going to be a nightmare," says the Discovery Institute's Agnew.

Sound Transit is beginning work on a second round of transit projects and taxes to submit to voters, perhaps next year. Despite Sounder North's slow start, there's talk of expanding it.

The city of Edmonds wants more daily trains. The Port of Seattle wants a new station in Seattle's Interbay neighborhood.

Fimia says expanding Sounder would compound what already is a big mistake. She points to a state law that allows Sound Transit to develop commuter rail only if it's more cost-effective than a comparable bus system.

But Olson, the Sound Transit vice chairman, says he's open to the possibility. The decision could hinge on how the second train fares, he says.

The second train's debut is a pivotal moment for Sounder North, says Reid Shockey, a former Everett planning director who once served on Sound Transit's Citizen Oversight Panel.

"If the [ridership] numbers trend upwards," he says, "it'll be a signal that the problem was a scheduling problem, that it wasn't because people didn't like rail."

^^ John Wolfe is a great guy. He totally cleaned up all the mess at the Port Olympia that Nixon Handy left. It still amazes me that Sec. of State Sam Reed (who needs to resign) hired the corrupt & incompetent Handy for his elections department; no wonder it was so easy to steal the election from the voters in favor of his partisan friends. Handy should be in jail.

Amtrak train collides with BNSF maintenance truck

An Amtrak passenger train traveling just north of Kelso, Washington at Castle Rock struck a truck that was parked on the rails.

The impact, which happened around 13:40 on Friday, caused the truck to burst into flames.

According to the train's conductor, the emergency braking system was activated, but the collision was unavoidable.

The truck is reportedly owned by the BNSF Railway Company and was being operated by two maintenance employees.

No one was inside the truck at the time.

Of the 270 passengers on board the train, one ended up hurt. That person was treated for minor injuries and released.

As for the blaze, firefighters were able to get the flames under control within 15 minutes. Bystanders were evacuated from the immediate area because of the risk of explosion.

The National Transportation Safety Board will be investigating the incident. - KATU-TV2, Portland, OR, courtesy Larry W. Grant

National Transportation Safety Board's (NTSB) Accident Report On:


Side Collision of Burlington Northern Santa Fe Railway Train
and Union Pacific Railroad Train near Kelso, Washington, November 15, 2003 (http://www.ntsb.gov/publictn/2005/RAB0503.htm)

Has been released.

what annoys me about the cascades service is that it is not really useful to vancouver people, as to do the trip to seattle for the day, they have to drive an hour to bellingham, as only one train goes through all the way to vancouver; the rest stop in bellingham.
You can blame the Canadian officials for not upgrading the existing rail facilities north of the border to adequate levels.

Amtrak Cascades would love to run a second daily train to Vancouver. It would make the second run north of Seattle a lot more profitable that terminating it at Bellingham.

http://www.wsdot.wa.gov/rail/cascades/2train.cfm

King Street Station on track to return to one-time splendor (http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/transportation/229203_kingstreet20.html)

http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/dayart/20050620/450nwsxx_kingst028.jpg

For close to half a century, Seattle's skyline was dominated by two towers: Smith Tower and the red brick clock tower of the 1906 King Street Station, an imitation of a famous tower in Piazza San Marco in Venice, Italy.

Inside the station, a grand two-story waiting room sported fluted pilasters, polished marble wainscoting and elaborate plaster ornamental wall panels of garlands and cornucopias.

The cream-colored ceiling was bordered with plaster medallions. Mosaic tiles covered the floor.

But as the 1950s and 1960s arrived, the railroads that owned the station decided to "modernize" it.

"By today's standards, we think they engaged in destruction," says Lloyd Flem, executive director of the Washington Association of Rail Passengers.

The ornamental wall plaster was planed down, windows were boarded up, metal doors replaced wood doors. Worst of all, a low, dark false ceiling was installed.

Outside, microwave antennas were placed on the clock tower. The terra cotta roof was replaced with asphalt composition roofing.

"Why would they remove a terra-cotta roof which lasts for 100 years?" exclaims Peter Watson, project manager for Otak, an architectural firm working on renovating the station with developer Nitze-Stagen.

The state Department of Transportation, using Amtrak and federal money, is leading the effort to undo the damage of the "modernization" and clean up the dreary and long-neglected station.

The redo, which has been talked about for years, coincides with a resurgence of passenger rail service.

The $16.8 million renovation -- already under way and planned to be completed by early next year -- is just the start on a path to future prominence for the station, officials hope.

The remodel will bring back the 1906 ceiling and other ornamentation and the wood doors. It also will provide new windows, an expanded waiting room, and new ticketing, restroom and baggage facilities. There will be new heating and ventilation systems, along with earthquake protections.

Outside, the building will get new canopies and a new roof -- terra cotta. The clock will be repaired. The microwave antennae will go. An incompatible 1950s addition on the west side will be removed. The dirty building will be cleaned inside and out, Watson says.

Passengers waiting for trains at the station last week were positive about the renovation.

Rosemary Agostini, a Seattle doctor who planned to study for an exam on the train to Portland, said she had peeked at the original ceiling visible along the edges of the false ceiling.

"I love it when they do renovations," she said. "I think it's really, really good. I've traveled a lot in Europe. They have beautiful stations there. It's nice when people from there traveling here are able to see something that has some character and not just square ugliness."

Marci Robison of Portland gave a thumbs up to the clean-smelling, renovated bathroom. "I was pleasantly surprised," she said.

Decades ago, the nation's freight railroads exited the passenger rail business and didn't see much reason to spend money on passenger terminals such as the King Street Station, which is owned by Burlington Northern Santa Fe Railroad.

"For 60 or 70 years, governments at all levels put virtually all their investments into highways and airports," says Flem.

But he says things turned around when highways became more congested, airports became more of a hassle, and people began traveling more to Japan and Europe, where they saw and experienced thriving rail service.

"People are tired of driving all the time," says Ron Sheck, urban rail manager for the state Department of Transportation, which is in charge of the King Street Station renovation.

Amtrak's Cascades route between Portland and Seattle was operating one daily train in 1993 with 94,000 passengers a year. The state decided to start spending on rail and added a second daily round trip the next year, nearly doubling ridership to 180,000.

The state has continued to gradually ramp up service, says Kirk Frederickson, rail planning coordinator for the state. It has added trains and also extended service north to Bellingham and Vancouver, B.C. The state of Oregon has extended service from Portland to Eugene.

Last year saw 603,000 passengers on the Eugene to Vancouver, B.C., Cascades service -- more than six times what ridership on the Cascades service was in 1993.

The station also serves two Amtrak long-distance routes and Sound Transit's Sounder commuter service.

"The mayor's strategy is for (the King Street Station) to be perhaps the busiest of our three center city intermodal hubs," says Joan McCallion of the city's Department of Transportation. The other two are Colman Dock and Westlake Center.

The Seattle Monorail Project plans to put one of its stations next to King Street Station. The city is hoping that Greyhound will relocate there, says McCallion.

Taxis line up there. A Sound Transit light rail station is a block away. The city would like to explore moving a bike station to the rail station.

In the longer term, the city and others would like to see development on the north parking lot of Qwest Field just southwest of the rail station.

The city and state would also like to see renovation and activity in the vacant top two floors of the King Street Station, once used for railroad office and crew space.

Flem says he'd like to see high-end office space and a good restaurant, as has happened at Portland's restored Union Station.

"Plans are being developed for future use of the property," said Burlington spokesman Gus Melonas, declining to elaborate.

Until the renovation started, the King Street Station was dark, dirty, often mostly empty.

"It just slowly got grubbier and less attractive to the point that, frankly, most rail advocates were a little ashamed of it the last few years compared to the beautiful restoration of Portland Union Station," says Flem.

He's convinced the remodel will attract more passengers.

"It really does make a difference," he says. "People do respond to something that's aesthetically pleasing."

STATION FACTS

* Largest passenger rail station in Northwest.

* Amtrak service: Cascades between Eugene, Ore., and Vancouver, B.C.; Coast Starlight between Seattle and Los Angeles; Empire Builder between Seattle and Chicago.

* Sound Transit Sounder commuter service: Morning and evening rush hours between Seattle and Everett, and between Seattle and Tacoma. Service also to Seahawks and Mariners games.

* 2004 traffic: More than 628,000 passengers got on or off an Amtrak train at the station; 880,000 passengers got on or off a Sounder train.

http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/dayart/20050620/450nwsxx_kingst250.jpg

I will love King Street even more once it is completely refinished.

Another Amtrak run to be launched

JOSEPH TURNER; The News Tribune
Published: June 20th, 2005 12:01 AM

Washington state plans to add another midday run of passenger train service between Seattle and Portland next year, which the state hopes will bring an additional 100,000 riders on board each year.
It will be the fourth Amtrak passenger run between those two cities and the second during the middle of the day. Amtrak, with much help from Washington, also runs trains in the morning and evening.

Jeff Schultz, a planner in the Rail Division of the state Department of Transportation, said the agency plans to alter the departure times of other runs to squeeze in the additional round-trip service.

The Cascade corridor, which runs from Vancouver, B.C., to Eugene, Ore., had more than 600,000 riders along some segments of that route last year, and the midday runs have become popular, he said.

“When we added one midday train in 1998, everyone thought it would be a bust,” Schultz said. “No one would want to take a train in the middle of the day. But ridership has really taken off.”

Ridership between Eugene and Seattle is even greater if including the 700,000 passengers who traveled on that segment as part of Amtrak’s long-haul Coast Starlight service from Los Angeles.

The new round-trip service between Seattle and Portland is scheduled to begin July 1, 2006, at a cost to the state of $2.75 million for the first year. Round-trip coach fares start at about $50.

Washington, Oregon and Amtrak are making other improvements to their trains and tracks, although much of those will be in the future.

One major project, the so-called Point Defiance bypass, is scheduled for 2007-2013 and will cost nearly $60 million. That will allow trains to come up the Nisqually Valley and into Lakewood, bypassing the scenic route around Point Defiance and cutting 10 to 13 minutes off the run time. They also will be using the same tracks as Sounder, South Transit’s commuter rail from Lakewood to Everett.

Those projects are some of the $8.6 billion in highway, bridge, ferry and train projects the state plans to build over the next 10 years with revenue from a 9.5-cent hike in the gas tax and vehicle weight fees. The first part of the gas-tax increase will take effect July 1 when the overall state gas tax rises from 28 to 31 cents a gallon.

The remaining 6.5 cents will be phased in by 2008.

The new vehicle weight fees take effect in January.

I asked coworkers why Amtrak does not add more service to Vancouver, and the answer was one I should have expected. There is too much traffic and too little sidings and apparently, none can be added.

Besides that, I hear a second Talgo trainset will be put in service to Vancouver 2009.

I asked coworkers why Amtrak does not add more service to Vancouver, and the answer was one I should have expected. There is too much traffic and too little sidings and apparently, none can be added.
http://www.wsdot.wa.gov/rail/cascades/2train.cfm

That helps. Thank you!

Trade with China spurs big growth for railroad
Dallas Morning News
Bond James Bond

DALLAS - Trade with China isn't just about cheaper clothes and computers. It's also reshaping and reinvigorating one of the linchpins of the American economy, the Burlington Northern Santa Fe Corp.

The nation's No. 2 freight railroad is thriving as it finds its fortunes increasingly linked to shipments from the world's fastest-growing economy.

Revenue at the company has been hitting record highs. Demand is so strong that for the first time since the deregulation of railroads in 1980, BNSF has been able to raise its prices, instead of lowering them. And after several years of trimming its workforce, the railroad is hiring again.

So important is trade with China that BNSF, which operates a 32,000-mile network stretching across 28 states, including Montana, and two Canadian provinces, no longer sees its financial outlook completely tied to the ups and downs of the U.S. economy.

"Gross domestic product growth is not the most relevant issue for us," Matthew Rose, BNSF's chairman and chief executive, said in a wide-ranging interview discussing the future of BNSF and the rail business.

"How much more goods are going to be produced in China is really much more important than whether or not we have 3.1 percent GDP growth or 4 percent or 2.7."

China impacts more than the bottom line. To transport the rapidly growing number of containers arriving daily at ports in Southern California and the Pacific Northwest, the railroad has had to alter the way it operates.

Since 2000, U.S. imports from China have nearly doubled in value, reaching $197 billion last year alone.

Congested highways, a truck driver shortage and improvements in railroads' efficiency and reliability have turned rail into a more attractive option for retailers, manufacturers and others.

As a result, railroads are prospering and scrambling to find ways to carry even more freight.

"We are in the very early innings of a comeback for a very traditional industry," said Anthony Hatch, an independent analyst who has followed the railroads for two decades. "This is clearly the best time I've ever seen since deregulation. We are very clearly in a renaissance."

With BNSF leading the pack, total industry revenue jumped 13.4 percent in this year's first quarter from the year-ago period, the largest quarterly increase in more than a decade, according to James Valentine, an analyst at Morgan Stanley.

Even lofty fuel prices, the bane of airlines, isn't proving as much of a headache as many had feared. BNSF is offsetting higher diesel costs through a combination of hedging and customer fuel surcharges.

Investors have taken notice. Over the past year, BNSF's share price has shot up a third, closing Friday at $46.68 per share.

The good times mark a profound shift from the past. Since railroads were deregulated a quarter-century ago, the industry has been cutting capacity and merging to cut costs as prices fell year after year.

To survive, many railroads like BNSF began utilizing technology to become more efficient. Toll-tag devices, rather than hundreds of employees, now record freight car numbers. And technology has enabled train crews to shrink from five people to two.

Rose isn't ruling out further industry consolidation, noting that the 36 large railroads that existed in 1980 have been whittled down to only seven today.

"It's just kind of hard for me to imagine there won't be another one (merger or acquisition) at some point in time," he said. "Customers are going to want railroads to have broader capability across the supply chain. And merging has for these network businesses been a pretty good way to do that."

For now, though, BNSF is focused on handling the rising volume of trade with China. It's also transporting increasingly greater quantities of low-sulfur coal from the Powder River Basin in Wyoming and Montana to utilities.

This year, the railroad, which has about 38,000 employees, will hire 3,400 workers, half of whom will fill retirement vacancies. That comes on top of 3,600 new hires last year, of which 1,000 were added to handle the increase in business.

In addition to expanding its work force, BNSF is adding additional tracks, terminals, locomotives and freight cars.

It's planning to build a new intermodal container transfer facility five miles north of the Port of Los Angeles. And closer to home, it's enlarging its operations at Alliance Texas, the logistics and transportation hub north of Fort Worth.

"You'll see us just capitalize on what we think are some really great opportunities out there," Rose said. "You'll see us continue to really advance the clock through technology."

Big News On NW Railroading Front

It seems decided that there will be a new locomotive service facility built in Pasco to replace Interbay. And, a new classification yard will be built at either Auburn or Everett. Interbay as we know it will soon be history. It's land for non-RR use is too valuable.

The equilateral turnouts at either end of Nelson Bennett Tunnel will be replaced with conventional #20s.

Trackwork starting up again in Tacoma. A new control point just South of TR Jct. called Bay Street. New third track from there down through Moon Yard. It sounds like like any D Street work is on hold until next year. They can't do the first stages of road/bridge work if the tracks have already been realigned. A couple years estimated for all that.

Stampede Tunnel cutting in 2-3 years. Being discussed is shutting down the line for a year while contractors work three shifts a day. They're trying to get the Port of Tacoma involved in this one. $27 million is projected.

Some are aware of work happening in Auburn Yard right now. There will be four new long tracks and four shorter tracks built. This is primarily for staging trains for Tacoma.

TLM coming back in October for 1)the new track through Moon Yard, 2)Lowell Siding extension in Everett and 3) Three new main tracks and two other than main from Lander Street to Holgate Street in Seattle for the Sound Transit project.

Also for Sound Transit, site work to begin between MP 7 and MP 8 on the Scenic Sub for double tracking. After the first of the year, MP 9 will get a new double crossover. Then the switch at MP 8 will be removed, the existing single track aligned to become Main 1 and a new Main 2 built.

wow I have never seen a Former talk to themselves so much in one thred!

There's always a first. And just because no one comments on the thread doesn't mean I don't have readers. As you can see, nearly 1000 views.

I've read just about every article on here, I really appreciate these gv. It's just that a lot of the articles you can't really respond to.

I agree. Not very many people can respond to rail developments. But, I am sure people would like the updates for something. What this is, I don't know. I don't know where I am going with this. :)

Rails could include overpass

Lakewood commuters who’ve already waited five years for passenger rail service might have to wait as long as five more.
Sound Transit said Thursday that the question is whether service will be available in late 2008 or as late as 2011.

At issue is a 1.2-mile segment of track the agency needs to build as part of its plan to run 8.2 miles of its Sounder commuter train service from Lakewood to Tacoma.

On Thursday, Sound Transit officials discussed two options for the 1.2-mile segment, both of which raised new cost, time and safety issues for a service that was once expected to launch in 2001.

Under the first option, Sound Transit would do some additional design and safety work to build the 1.2-mile segment, between D and M streets in Tacoma, and open the entire 8.2-mile line in fall 2008 – six months later than planned.

But that option would come with a cap on future expansion of train service.

That’s because it entails running the 1.2-mile track across Pacific Avenue and South Tacoma Way. Such “at-grade” crossings trigger federal rules intended to prevent collisions, including limits on the volume of train traffic.

As a result, Sound Transit could run its planned nine daily roundtrips, but no more. The agency has no short-term plans to expand service beyond the nine daily roundtrips, officials said. However, the state Department of Transportation is interested in running its Amtrak train on the same rail corridor in the future.

Enter the second option. It would eliminate both the crossing problems and the service cap by building an overpass. But that would push the opening of the Lakewood-to-Tacoma train service from fall 2008 to 2010 or 2011. It also would increase the cost of the overall project by as much as $55 million – from $210 million to $265 million.

No new taxes would be needed to cover the price increase, officials said. Pierce County’s share of Sound Transit’s current tax revenue would cover it.

And increasing the cost of the Lakewood-to-Tacoma project “doesn’t mean another project would not get done,” added Kathy Johnson, a spokeswoman for Sound Transit.

Sound Transit project managers presented the alternatives and their implications to the agency’s board Thursday. The board directed the managers to investigate whether other agencies, including the City of Tacoma, the state Department of Transportation and BNSF Railway, would be willing to help pay for the overpass option to complete the 1.2-mile segment. In the meantime, the agency will continue design and reconstruction work on the seven miles of existing track that make up the rest of the 8.2-mile corridor.

Not all of Sound Transit’s board members agreed that the agency should pursue the overpass option. Pierce County Executive John Ladenburg, board chairman, said the intersections of track and roadway can be designed to increase safety without building an overpass.

He said moving forward with the agency’s current plan meets the needs of commuters sooner and will meet Sound Transit’s needs for the next 15 to 20 years.

Voters in Pierce, King and Snohomish counties approved the $4 billion initiative to create Sound Transit in 1996. The 1996 plan envisioned a regional system with light rail, commuter trains and express buses. The bulk of funding comes from local taxes, including a 0.4 percent sales tax and a 0.3 percent vehicle license tax.

Voters were promised 82 miles of commuter train service between Lakewood and Everett.

Currently, Sound Transit runs commuter trains between Tacoma and Seattle, and between Everett and Seattle.
Tacoma News Tribune

Remember discussing the difficulty in folding the rail line through that area, Sounder? Apparently they don't know what they'll do either!

Railroads back on track for freight, profit

By Ronald D. White
Los Angeles Times

After years of retrenchment, railroads across North America are reporting record profits and rolling forward with massive expansion projects of the kind that haven't been seen in decades.

The growth has been fueled by a continuing flood of cargo containers filled with Asian products, which ended the coal industry's 102-year streak as rail's biggest revenue generator in 2003 and has surged farther since then.

Railroads are gaining ground on the rival trucking industry, which is suffering from sharply higher diesel costs and a shortage of long-haul drivers. But companies that move goods by train are complaining about increasing rates and delays.

"It's a new day dawning for the railroads," said Don Hodges, whose Hodges mutual fund lists railroads as some of its largest investments. "The railroads have been underperformers for so many years that people stopped paying attention to them. I think there is a lot ahead of them even yet."

The Pacific Northwest's biggest movers of intermodal traffic, Union Pacific Railroad and BNSF Railway(formerly known as Burlington Northern Santa Fe), posted strong earnings for 2005.

That performance contrasted with the railroads' struggle in 2004 to keep pace with crushing congestion that began at the ports and crept inland to the tracks, which had to turn away cargo or leave it sitting for as long as two weeks before moving it east.

Omaha, Neb.-based Union Pacific, the nation's largest railroad, reported 70 percent growth in 2005 profit to $1.0 billion while revenue jumped 11 percent to $13.6 billion.

Fort Worth, Texas-based BNSF, which owns the second-largest railroad, earned a record $1.5 billion, up 93 percent, on revenue of $13 billion, up 19 percent, for 2005.

No. 3 CSX reported 2005 profit rose 237 percent to $1.1 billion and revenue grew 7 percent to $8.6 billion. No. 4 Norfolk Southern saw its profit rise 39 percent to a record $1.2 billion in 2005, while revenue rose 17 percent to $8.5 billion.

"I am particularly pleased that we converted strong revenue growth into a significant increase in operating income," Union Pacific Chief Executive James Young said about his company's 2005 performance in a conference call with investors and analysts.

BNSF Chief Executive Matthew Rose, in a similar call, described "a systemic change in the demand for rail transportation ... and this new environment creates tremendous opportunities for us to grow business."

Wall Street chill

Despite its turnaround, Union Pacific is receiving relatively little praise on Wall Street.

A.G. Edwards & Sons analyst Don Broughton, for instance, took Union Pacific to task for its "anemic" growth in intermodal cargo volume. It was up 4.4 percent, which would have seemed strong in almost any other year.

BNSF managed 9.2 percent intermodal growth.

Industrywide, intermodal rail freight rose nearly 7 percent to 11.7 million containers and trailers in 2005. Total volume, which includes freight moved in rail cars, rose 2.4 percent to $1.69 trillion ton-miles.

"The industry for many years was cursed with overcapacity. Now, we aren't. It's a sea change for us. We have gone from having to chase freight business to having freight customers chase us," said Tom White, spokesman for the Association of American Railroads.

Major mover

Railroads move more than 40 percent of the nation's freight tonnage compared with nearly 30 percent moved by truck. But railroads reap about 10 percent of freight revenue, while trucking companies take in about 80 percent, according to the rail group.

Railroads are gaining more of that revenue because the goods moved in cargo containers tend to be more expensive than the coal, grain and other commodities that ride in rail cars.

In addition, the greater fuel efficiency of trains in an era of volatile prices and dearth of truck drivers is having an effect on long hauls, transportation analysts said.

The American Trucking Association said the nation is 20,000 short of the drivers it needs, a figure it expects to rise to 80,000 by 2010.

Business has been so brisk that railroads are having trouble maintaining their targeted average speeds and delivering goods on time.

Meanwhile, they've been able to pass along fuel-price increases and raise rates for the first time in years, by an average 15 percent between November 2004 and November, 2005 for intermodal cargo, according to Logistics Management, a trade magazine for supply-chain professionals.

Neither trend sits well with customers.

YRC Worldwide, until recently known as Yellow Roadway, moves intermodal freight with its trucks and by rail. YRC Chief Executive William Zollars last month blamed reduced company earnings on railroad rate increases, new charges for trailers that formerly were free and service problems.

Tardiness grows

"On-time rail performance continued at well below acceptable levels, which has caused additional inefficiencies in our networks," Zollars told analysts.

Atlanta-based shipping giant United Parcel Service said it has paid out $1.5 billion to "every railroad of consequence in North America" since the start of 2004 to send items moving by ground to their destinations. Deteriorating on-time performance has become intolerable, spokesman Norman Black said.

Jim Hathaway, general manager of the Dunn Energy Cooperative in Menomonie, Wis., said the co-op will need to charge its 9,000 electricity customers as much as 15 percent more because BNSF has raised rates on the utility's coal shipments.

"It makes me sick," said Hathaway. "It's very disappointing to have a railroad [that] charges exorbitant fees for services we can't get anywhere else."

Hathaway is urging the co-op's customers to support a bill introduced by Rep. Mark Green, R-Wis., in 2005 that would strip the railroads of antitrust protections.

To accommodate the freight deluge and cool customer anger, railroads began investing heavily in building track and buying equipment in 2004.

BNSF says it will increase capital spending about 10 percent to $2.4 billion on new track, 9,000 new double-stack cars and 310 locomotives in 2006.

BNSF is spending about $60 million on track improvements this year in Washington state alone, said spokesman Gus Melonas.

Plus the company is "aggressively hiring" in many areas, including train crew, mechanical positions and track maintenance, he said.

"We're investing to meet present and future needs," Melonas said.

Union Pacific will spend about $2.7 billion systemwide, down slightly from $2.9 billion in 2005, on 145,000 tons of new rail, 200 more locomotives, 2,700 new or leased rail cars and the hiring of hire 3,600 trainmen and engineers.

But rail experts and customers fret that even that pace of investment won't be enough.

BNSF provides a clear example. Analysts point to BNSF as a good model of how to run a railroad, but even it is running into trouble.

BNSF saw its freight-car velocity drop from more than 205 miles a day in 2004 to 183 miles in 2005. The railroad's on-time performance has fallen from 92 percent of its trains in 2002 to 71 percent in 2005, systemwide.

Seattle Times desk editor Bill Kossen contributed to this report.

Copyright © 2006 The Seattle Times Company

http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/ABPub/2006/03/09/2002855018.jpg
U.S. railroads, including BNSF Railway, move more than 40 percent of the nation's freight tonnage compared with nearly 30 percent moved by trucks. About 35 BNSF freight trains travel each day on these tracks along Puget Sound, south of Edmonds.


http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/ABPub/2006/03/09/2002855024.jpg
A BNSF Railway train rolls north along Puget Sound toward Edmonds this past week. BNSF, which owns the second-largest U.S. railroad, made a record $1.5 billion profit in 2005.

http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/ABPub/2006/03/10/2002857404.gif

http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/ABPub/2006/03/09/2002855565.gif


Link (http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/businesstechnology/2002859819_railcomeback12.html)

Wow, good time to be in the rail business eh?

BTW, any new updates about the Snoqualmie tunnel, or any other east-west corridors adding capacity?

Snoqualmie Tunnel is dead, probably forever--unless some "miracle" forces the railroad to try to take back the land from trail uses and actually succeeds.

Stampede Tunnel, which I believe you are probably referring to, is running into some difficulty. From what I have heard, the tunnel cannot just get it's roof raised to allow intermodal traffic. Apparently it needs to be entirely rebored--for what reason, I don't know. But this could only be railroader gossip. If it turns to be true though, the entire project would cost a lot more, and take longer than BNSF had originally planned, as can be imagined.

And for corridors adding capacity- there are major track relocations, additions, and upgradings in the works.

A little old, but still valid nonetheless.

Light-rail link to airport approved

The deal to build a 1.7-mile light-rail link between Seattle-Tacoma International Airport and Tukwila was approved by the Sound Transit board April 13. A light-rail link between downtown Seattle and the airport is expected to be completed by December 2009.

The deal between Sound Transit and the Port of Seattle, which operates the airport, will allow a light-rail station next to the fourth level of the airport's parking garage, with a pedestrian bridge linking the station and airline ticket counters.

Another bridge, across International Boulevard, will link the station with a drop-off and pick-up facility. The estimated $244 million extension will open several months after the initial track from downtown Seattle to Tukwila is complete in mid-2009. Sound Transit said free shuttle buses will carry airport passengers from Tukwila to the airport in the interim.

Sound Transit officials estimate that upon completion, the light-rail ride from downtown Seattle to the airport will take 36 minutes.

http://seattle.bizjournals.com/seattle/stories/2006/04/10/daily24.html

Doesn't say when they will begin construction on the light rail from S. 154th St. to the airport. All it says it will be completed in winter of 2009.

Restoration work sends King Street Station on return trip to glory days

By Stuart Eskenazi
Seattle Times staff reporter


If the clock staring out from the north face of King Street Station's 242-foot-tall tower is to be believed, time stands still in Seattle at about, oh, 6:20.

The four faces of the clock have been stuck in time for goodness knows how long, a measure of several decades of neglect that has plagued one of the city's true architectural gems.

A gem? Passengers who hop on Amtrak or Sound Transit's Sounder commuter trains in Seattle are more inclined to call King Street Station a dump.

But as passenger-train service is experiencing a revival, so, too, is King Street Station.

A long-overdue restoration project, which finally got going in 2003, is chugging along as the depot embarks upon a second century of service. King Street Station celebrates its 100th birthday on May 10.

A restored King Street Station, which could be completed by the end of 2007, has the potential to dazzle like it did in the old days.

"This once was a beautiful train station, and it looks like it's on its way to becoming one again," said Walter Grecula of Ballard, a retired electrical engineer for the railways and railroad historian.

The building's renaissance, however, hinges on its current owner, BNSF Railway, donating it to the city. Although it was BNSF's idea to hand over the building, the two sides continue to negotiate the details.

For BNSF, which transports freight, not passengers, and leases the station to Amtrak, the building is more of a liability than an asset. With BNSF out of the picture, the $16.8 million restoration project — paid for through federal, state and local money — could move forward faster.

A grand past

If nothing else, King Street Station is a survivor.

Built jointly by the now-defunct Great Northern Railway and Northern Pacific Railway, the depot supported a double-track tunnel that stretched more than 5,000 feet from Main Street to Virginia Street. Before King Street Station's debut in 1906, the station serving the two railways was a shedlike structure along the waterfront at the foot of Columbia Street.

The new depot, however, was something else. It was christened Union Station and renamed King Street Station in 1911.

In those days, train stations acted as front gates for a city and were designed to impress. That's less true today — and a good thing, too, otherwise Seattle's first impression might be that of a city that cares less.

The architects, who also designed Grand Central Terminal in New York City, patterned the station's tower after the campanile of St. Mark's Church in Venice. When the station opened in 1906, it was the tallest building in Seattle.

The interior radiated elegance, with high ornamental plaster ceilings, white Italian-marble columns, brass light sconces, chandeliers, inlaid mosaic glass tile trim, and a terrazzo and mosaic tile floor.

"The building has incredible bone structure," said Peter Watson, a principal with OTAK, an architecture firm consulting on the restoration with the state Department of Transportation. "It's just been neglected for so many years."

More trains pulling in

King Street Station's state of disrepair went relatively ignored until passenger-train service began reawakening about a decade ago.

In 1993, only six trains used the station each day.

Today, between Amtrak and the Sounder service, there are 26.

Amtrak runs 14 one-way trips a day, and is adding a Seattle-Portland round trip in July. The state transportation department projected in 2004 that the number of Amtrak passengers between Seattle and Portland would increase from 350,000 to 1.9 million in 2023.

Sound Transit plans to more than double the number of Sounder trips by the end of 2008. Sounder riders, however, do not have to pass through the historic building to catch their train; they board from a dedicated platform.

World War II-era photographs reveal the station in its heyday as a busy transportation hub with a newsstand, barber shop and restaurant. But as air travel became popular, passenger trains became passé.

The railways responded in the late 1950s and early '60s by remodeling King Street Station in the name of passenger convenience. Promoted as a "modernization," the utilitarian result leaves visitors today asking: "What were they thinking?"

The railways stripped the marble from the columns. They boarded up windows and replaced wood-and-glass doors with metal ones. They converted the open, airy waiting room into a claustrophobic maze of compartments, including one smack in the middle for storing luggage.

Covering the ceiling

Most nefarious of all, they covered the 45-foot-high, plaster ceiling, concealing it behind a dropped metal ceiling. The lower ceiling cut off the second-floor balcony, where carolers once serenaded passengers during the Christmas season. For good measure, the lookouts from the balcony to the main waiting room were sealed shut with concrete blocks.

Through gaps in the waiting-room ceiling, visitors to King Street Station can catch a peek at the fancy ceiling above it — and get an idea of what the golden era of Seattle train travel must have looked like.

"The good part of putting up that false ceiling is that it protected the original," said Ron Sheck, project manager for the state transportation department. "But believe me, we're going to have a party when it comes down."

Rebuilding a grand staircase leading to the waiting room from the South Jackson Street entrance also is in the plans.

Restoration has begun on the ground floor, at the South King Street entrance, with a new interior canopy erected and the "Compass Room" entry hall made over so it looks like it did in the old days.

Marble and glass tile, true to the original, have gone up. Glass globe shades for the replica brass light fixtures are expected to arrive any day. Throughout the station, daylight again is shining through windows. Entrance doors are wood and glass, just like in 1906, instead of metal.

A new green tile roof, similar to the original, promises to be striking from a distance. So will the pyramid peak of the tower, which will shine at night and finally rid itself of a microwave dish.

Most Seattleites, however, will take their greatest pleasure in knowing that the old clock is going to work again, its hands moving, its glass faces backlit.

"The tower is not a great beacon for the city, and we'd love for it to become one again," said Patrice Gillespie Smith, chief of staff for Seattle's Department of Transportation.

It's about time.

Stuart Eskenazi: 206-464-2293 or seskenazi@seattletimes.com

Seattle Times (http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/localnews/2002951493_station25m.html)

http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/ABPub/2006/04/25/2002951225.jpg
Thanks to its clock tower, King Street Station — originally christened Union Station — was the tallest building in Seattle when it opened in 1906. The restoration project will have the clock working again.

http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/ABPub/2006/04/25/2002952658.jpg
A gap in the ceiling, installed in 1962, reveals the original carved plaster ceiling. The lower ceiling was an attempt to "modernize" the look of the station, but will now be removed.

http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/ABPub/2006/04/25/2002952643.jpg
Main waiting area of the King Street Station in 1949.

A lot of developments in the NW recently, and I most sincerely apologize for not updating you all!

Some brief updates:

Seattle

Seattle's new mainline to King Street Station is nearly complete. It is now triple tracked and bypasses the old line around Safeco Field and parallels the long parking row perpendicular to R. Brougham. It reunites to the old mainline near Lander St. Seattle now looks like Chicago there has been so much rail development.

King Street Station track reconfiguration will begin soon as well, which will allow more passenger trains and more efficient operations.

http://img341.imageshack.us/img341/6216/ghjse8.png

Before the construction of the new mainline, passenger trains at King St. (red) had to cross two heavily trafficked freight lines (the original mainline (dark blue)) to get to the passenger car storage yard (orange). The new mainline (light blue) eradicates this difficulty.

Dinner Train

Because of the piss-poor foresight transportation officials in the state possess, the line which the Dinner train runs on will be sold--well, is in the process of being sold. It may fall through, though. The line runs through the heavily populated Eastside corridor through Bellevue and its suburbs, and could be used as a transit line, just like Sounder through the valley. But the supreme stupidity that is Ron Sims would like to turn this crucial path into a biking trail. This is a shady plan and he must be making money from somewhere in this whole property switch debacle. Who knows.

Anyways, the dinner train is being forced off the line, and will relocate to the city of Tacoma and begin runs from Freighthouse Square to central interior Washington--the Mineral Lake area. Although this route is far prettier, it is away from the population base that is Seattle and there is no more wine! What will the drunks do!? Anyways, it also reinforces the rail renaissance that is taking place in the city of Tacoma.

Tacoma

Half Moon Yard on Dock St was reconfigured to eradicate sharp turns of rail present in the yard since the land it rests on was filled and the tracks put into place. Speed will increase through the area. This is part of a large plan to triple track Tacoma's mainline, improve signals and switches, and increase speed and efficiency.

D St. Overpass is also nearly completed. It climbs over the D. Street Yard and its 4 spur tracks which create the yard--a notoriously busy crossing. Multiple trains often block the tracks here at a time to the frustration of drivers who curse and try a different route. It should be completed by Summer 2008.

Sounder from Tacoma to Lakewood is still working out its crucial kinks from Freighthouse Square up into Nalley Valley. Its completion is scheduled for 2010 and could look very much like this:

http://media.thenewstribune.com/smedia/2007/07/22/01/943-OPE0722_TRANSIT_P2.standalone.prod_affiliate.5.jpg

http://media.thenewstribune.com/smedia/2007/07/22/01/951-OPE0722_TRANSIT_P1.standalone.prod_affiliate.5.jpg

Both Sounder and Amtrak will use this line, along with the occasional freight. Tacoma is once again a great center for rail traffic. Is it 1925?

Stampede Pass

While this project is slow to take off, construction is indeed imminent. Rumours are that the BNSF railway is waiting for the property switch with Ron Sims, the state and the Port (the Port who just backed out today) to use the profits to retrofit Stampede Tunnel. Even if it fails though, this project is for sure a go, whether by the railway's initiative or state's and the ports, which want to buy it for Amtrak and personal port traffic.

Streetcars

Streetcar proposals and extensions run rampant in the area from Everett to Tacoma. Tacoma is planning to recreate portions of its former, extraordinary 125 streetcar system it dismantled for buses. It needs to find funding though.

Seattle is constructing the new South Lake Union extension of its streetcar system , and plans more.

Everett is still in planning stages.




All In All

All in all, we have a tremendous rail revolution taking place.

I love pretty much everything you described there. Actually didn't know about the new arrangement near Safeco.

My love includes the Eastside trail. Much needed. Rail can co-exist with it, though frankly that's not a route that would merit rail transit for a long time.

Any news on Bay Area rail?

^ yea. theyre not building any. :(

for now at least

Any news on Bay Area rail?

Ther's some talk of extending CalTrain into Salinas (though I don't know if it would be called/be a part of CalTrain)...I'll look for a link...

Great news from another source:

From: Macster (http://www.railroadforums.com/forum/showpost.php?p=193323&postcount=1)

Tentitive agreement on Sounder/Seattle Sub Improvements

Got word on a tentative agreement with BNSF and Sound Transit regarding the November 2008 plan aka "ST 2.5" The most talked about plan which if approved will be on the November 2008 ballot which will expand Sounder Commuter Rail to 30 trains a day and all day service. This would increase service from 19 trains a day to 30 trains a day. This would not include extending service to Dupont or extra equipment. This is only for the South line (Seattle to Lakewood)

The secondary plan would extend Sounder between 2009 and 2020 to 24 trains a day on the South line and all day limited service. It will also extend platforms to accommodate 10 car trains. It would also includes 3 trains on the weekend, excluding special train service for the Mariners, Seahawks, and the future MLS team which would be playing at Qwest Field. It will expand BNSF's capacity by extending the third main from it's current end point at Black River (Tukwila, Wa) to Kent, Wa (At James Street) ST would like to extend

According to the Washington State Transportation Committee (Should still be on Comcast TVW Channel 23), Paula Hammond and the Kent City Council supports rebuilding the Kent Station platforms to allow traffic to flow over Central Avenue without long backups that commonly happens when Sounder pulls into the station at Kent. James Street would become part of the grade separation projects and become a new Overpass. This plan would eliminate 6 businesses and reconfigure the Kent Station bus loading/unloading bays at the station. In the future, this would also eliminate 3 grade crossings in town and would also install a "quiet zone" to encourage Transit Oriented Development in the Kent Station area. Interesting enough, passenger trains would still be required to sound for each of Kent's crossings ONLY if they are run-through trains.

Kent and Auburn would like to see BNSF or WSDOT to extend the third main to an unmentioned area at Pacific which I would assume be Control Point "Ellingson" in South Auburn/Pacific.

The City of Auburn is looking at ways add 3 additional tracks in Auburn Yard and would start a traffic impact study on building a new intermodal ramp at Auburn Yard to relieve congestion from Seattle and Tacoma Ports.

That's all the news I have... I don't think the intermodal ramp or the second package will go through but it would be nice!