FORT WORTH, Texas — BNSF Railway has placed in service another section of quadruple main line on its Southern Transcon route, this time on the Seligman Subdivision near the California-Arizona border.
The four-mile section of fourth main line through Needles, Calif., went into service recently, BNSF said in a June 7 customer advisory.
The Needles project joins two others — five miles of quadruple main line through Amarillo, Texas, on the Hereford Sub and 10 miles of triple track through Belen, N.M., on the Gallup Sub — as locations where high-priority trains can more easily scoot around slower trains at crew-change points.
The Hereford and Gallup projects were completed late last year.
The additional high iron allows 70-mph intermodal trains to leap ahead of slower-moving merchandise and unit trains at crew-change points, which BNSF says will alleviate congestion, boost average train speed, and improve service on the busiest intermodal route in North America.
The Gallup sub project, between Belen and Dalies, also provides more capacity on the 10-mile 1.25% climb for westbound traffic.
Still to come: About 12 miles of third track between West Needles and Ibis, Calif., a multi-year capacity project on the Needles Subdivision that remains in the permitting and environmental review stage, BNSF spokeswoman Amy Casas says.
The third track will provide more operational flexibility up the 1.4% grade that westbound trains face when pulling out of Needles.
Separately, BNSF says it has completed a new 10,000-foot siding at Dobbin, Texas, north of Houston, that complements a connection between its Houston and Conroe subdivisions that was completed last year.
“Both the siding and the new connection will help facilitate growing traffic flows between the Dallas-Fort Worth area and Houston/Gulf Coast,” BNSF said in its shipper advisory.
This year BNSF is spending $760 million on network expansion and efficiency projects.
