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River. Here, the former Santa Fe route follows the Washita River for a few miles through the Arbuckle Mountains. BNSF spent the night of June 18 dumping rip rap and ballast to restore the railroad while trains detoured out of Alliance, Texas, west to Amarillo over the former Fort Worth & Denver then east on the Transcon to Kansas City, Kan.; west- bounds took the reverse route. A washout near milepost 200 at Frick,
Colo., on the Boise City Subdivision on June 12 closed the railroad for nearly 24 hours. A washout two feet deep along an unknown length of the mainline re- quired a work train from Amarillo, Tex- as, to take five loads of ballast (plus addi- tional loads from Lakin, Colo., on the La Junta Subdivision) to patch up the road- bed. The Boise City Subdivision is a pre- dominantly southbound railroad, since northbounds run over former Burlington Northern rails from Amarillo to Pueblo. Multiple coal loads and two manifest freights were held out of La Junta, Colo., until the track was restored. Lastly, on June 19, the Thayer North Subdivision washed out between mile- post 211 and milepost 211.3, just south of Springfield, Mo. Washouts up to six feet deep compromised 700 feet of right- of-way on either side of the James River Bridge. Two S-CLOMEM (Intermodal Stacks, Clovis, N.M.-Memphis, Tenn.) trains detoured across the former San- ta Fe from Clovis to Temple, then to Houston, and across Union Pacific to Memphis; all other traffic was held for open track at Springfield. With the traf- fic backed up on the Thayer North Sub due to this washout, and residual effect of the Fourth of July holiday weekend, crews were in short supply between Kansas City and Fort Scott, Kan. In order to move the H-KCKTUL (High Priority Manifest, Argentine Yard, Kan- sas City-Tulsa, Okla.) and H-GALTUL (Galesburg, Ill.-Tulsa) trains, most of this volume ran west on the Transcon to Avard, Okla., then east via Enid over the Avard Sub to Tulsa.
Mexican Traffi c Increases
BNSF’s effort to develop traffic from Mexico is finally gaining traction. Al- though this traffic still has not reached the six-days-per-week service that BNSF announced last summer, there were some isolated sightings of eastbound Z trains with some of this Mexico traffic. For example, on June 8, Train Z-BEL- WSP7-07 (Priority UPS/LTL Intermod- al, Belen, N.M.-Willow Springs, Ill.) was passing through Waynoka, Okla., with
BNSF ES44DC and ES44C4 7989 lead- ing 46 loads and 2777 tons. The train had mostly double-stacked J.B. Hunt containers as well as a few spine cars of J.B. Hunt traffic.
Capacity Improvements Completed
A project to eliminate a remaining stretch of single track mainline on BNSF’s Southern Transcon in New Mex- ico took a major step in June and early July. When the railroad started this proj- ect, the territory between Carrnero and Vaughn was all single track with only Tejon siding between those two points. Since, that siding has been added to the second main track that will connect Carrnero and Vaughn. The first section of this new second main, between Car- rnero and Tejon, was put in service on June 8. Then, on July 6, the second main track between the east end of Tejon and the new crossovers at Vaughn was put into service. The old main track between Tejon’s east end and Vaughn was taken temporarily out of service shortly after July 6 to take care of some much-needed trackwork. As this issue went to press, BNSF was drawing closer to laying rail for a new second track between East Avard and Noel, Okla., on the Panhandle Subdi- vision. This will eliminate another sec- tion of single track on BNSF’s Southern Transcon. Previously, this area con- tained a single main track between Lod- er and East Avard. Back on March 10, BNSF cut in a new second main track and reduced the stretch of single track from Alva to East Avard, a stretch of just 12.4 miles, which also included a four- mile siding at Noel. By the end of 2015, BNSF anticipates
only seven miles of the entire Transcon between Chicago and Los Angeles will have single track. All seven of these miles include trackage on major bridg- es, including 2.5 miles between Fort Sumner, N.M., and CP 7197 over the Pecos River; 1.4 miles over the Missou- ri River between East and West Sibley, Mo.; and the aforementioned segment near Alva, Okla., over the Salt Fork of the Arkansas River between Alva and Noel. This latter section will be 3.1 miles and is scheduled to have a second main built in the next year and a half. Techni- cally speaking, BNSF will still have sin- gle track between Ellinois, Kan. (west of Emporia), and East Junction, near Mul- vane, Kan. But BNSF also has a second, CTC-equipped route with sidings that runs via Newton as well, so the railroad considers this a two main track territory
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