The Boyer East territory on the BNSF is a bottleneck on the Northern Transcon. The vast majority of the territory is the ex-Great Northern, with just a short section of track in Sandpoint built after the BN merger to connect the GN to the NP. The line sticks to riverbanks in narrow defiles to create a largely river level line through the Bitterroots of Northern Idaho and Western Montana. But the track twists and turns and punches though tunnels, thus creating miles of slow running. In the BN era, the Boyer West territory was the actual bottleneck on the entire Chicago-PNW route. There, the ex-GN traffic was forced onto the ex-NP (now operated by MRL across southern Montana) all the way into Spokane.  But by the time of the BNSF merger, the "Funnel" as it became know, was a scene of continual congestion. BNSF invested heavily, adding miles of second main track. By comparison, Boyer east got one new siding and a couple measly miles of second main track at Bonners Ferry, and an extended siding at Troy. The double tracking of the Boyer West territory in essence moved the bottleneck to Boyer East. Then BNSF began to route some traffic away from the MRL and have it go via Great Falls, Montana.  But since traffic had been light from 1998 up till this year, there wasn't much of a problem. But everything changed this past year, when grain traffic to the PNW boomed, as did international double stack traffic. Regular traffic such as manifest and domestic intermodal has also been on the increase with the recovering economy, with trains running in two sections sometimes. A new Z train running between St. Paul and Portland has also been added. This territory reflects the current situation here in the Fall of 2003, and it ain't pretty.
Traffic is usual lighter at the beginning of the week, and grows as it nears the weekend, with Friday and Saturday being all out mayhem.  The extra congestion and early snow has been giving Amtrak fits as well. Cold and wind have caused even shut downs to occur on the line east of the Rockies (one train was literally blown off a bridge in East Glacier). Furthermore, the Kootenai River Canyon between Crossport and Troy is inaccessible except by boat or rail. The roads that run through the area are quite literally straight up 500-1000'. The area is also needs quite a bit of attention. Most days MOW forces shut down the track for hours at a time to keep the hillside off the rails. As a DS, you will need to deal with all of this. And just like the old saying, late trains only get later. If you fall behind too much, you may never catch up, and eventually the railroad will grind to a halt with the corridor manager breathing down your neck.. Keep things moving ahead of the hot trains, and pay attention to the number of sidings you have, versus the number of trains you need to meet. You will also need to run faster intermodal trains around the slower manifest and grain trains. Particularly on the grade up from Bonners Ferry to Elmira. Have fun!

Ted Curphey
funnelfan@icehouse.net
http://www.icehouse.net/funnelfan/


