Nightmare At Custer Creek

The Billings Gazette remembered the worst train wreck in Montana's history this week.

On the night of June 19, 1938, the Milwaukee Road's crack Olympian (its first-class Chicago-Seattle/Tacoma passenger train) was running westward through eastern Montana, along the Yellowstone River. Unbeknownst to anyone on the railroad, a thunderstorm unleashed a flash flood down Custer Creek, a minor tributary the Milwaukee crossed.

The flash flood came fast and sudden, washing out the foundations of the bridge which had been inspected not a half-hour before. The train started crossing the bridge, causing its collapse; the momentum of the locomotive carried it to the other bank, but it also dragged two sleeper cars into the flood-swollen creek.

Before the waters receded, they took 48 lives. For a railroad that had prided itself on a great safety record, especially where passengers were involved, the tragedy was unthinkable.

If you wanted to visit the site today, you could, but there won't be much to see. The bridge was rebuilt, and the name of the place changed. The Milwaukee Road doesn't even exist anymore; it retreated from the west in 1980.

Racetrack

From Trains.com Newswire: (emphasis added by yours truly)

BNSF shows off the Transcon for press representatives

ALBUQUERQUE — To provide print media representatives a glimpse into its double-tracking efforts on the Chicago-Los Angeles “Transcon” main line between Kansas City and Albuquerque, BNSF Railway last Thursday operated, for invited press guests, a six-car passenger special with “theater” (tiered seats, full rear window) observation car Glacier View” on the rear.

Matt Rose, BNSF chairman, president, and CEO, led and narrated the tour, which focused on construction projects near Wellington, Kans.; Vaughn, N.Mex.; and Abo Canyon, a difficult stretch of New Mexico track on a 1.25 percent eastbound grade, where double-tracking efforts are complicated by the area’s rugged terrain and a waterway.

The railway has finished double-tracking about 97 percent of the entire Chicago-L.A. route for its ever-growing container trade from the Far East, BNSF officials said. In the next two years, the final single-track “bottleneck” gaps will be eliminated, boosting the line’s capacity from 80 to 120 trains each day. Work at Abo Canyon is expected to begin later this year, once all final permits are in place.

The need for the expansion was apparent at Fort Sumner, N.Mex., where the special passed two westbounds and four eastbounds waiting to negotiate one of the last stretches of single track.

Even as Rose spoke on the trip, BNSF was being designated as one of the top performers last year on the Standard & Poor's 500 stock index, according to a story in the Fort Worth Star-Telegram. But Rose knows that success can be just as treacherous as adversity, although the railroad now is having to deal with its success. Last year, BNSF enjoyed a record profit of $1.5 billion, not to mention a stock price that has climbed from the mid-$40 range last summer to more than $80. In the past two years, BNSF has increased its traffic volumes by 1.5 million carloads.

"Frankly, our service isn't what we want it to be," he said aboard the train. He noted that the railroad's on-time average had fallen in recent months from above 90 percent to around 80 percent. Systemwide average train speeds had dipped below 20 mph, indicating that traffic on BNSF's 32,000-mile system has slowed. In the old days, such cost-generating slowdowns were the product of deferred maintenance by cash-starved railroads. Today, for the first time in the memory of even the oldest railroaders, the nation's carriers have too much business.

"This is a world-class problem to have, but one that we must deal with," Rose said.

"That big intermodal business is the key to BNSF," says Darius Gaskins, the former chairman of the old Interstate Commerce Commission who was president of the Burlington Northern before it merged with Santa Fe in 1995. "BNSF has taken advantage of a terrific franchise. They don't have to depend on coal and grain as they did in the past."

Rose has told BNSF's 40,000 employees — a number that has increased by about 11,000 in the past three years and is expected to go up 3,500 this year — that "velocity" will be the watchword for BNSF this year.

"This is a volume business," Rose said as the train sped over newly laid concrete ties. "The better the system is moving, the more volume we can handle. It's as simple as that. Our biggest problem has been understanding market growth, which has been greater than anticipated. You couldn't get anybody to believe that traffic could rise by 10 [to] 15 percent annually, but that's what happened beginning in 2003."

Rose is the first to admit that customers are less than thrilled with slowdowns in service, combined with higher prices. The most influential shipper group, the National Industrial Transportation League, said in a report that "many of the changes [since deregulation] have resulted in greater market power for the railroad industry and decreased competitive options for shippers."

Rose said that "in a typical year, more than 200 businesses make a conscious decision to locate on our lines and use our shipping. I'm not going to apologize for what the industry has done," he says. "Unlike the highways and the airports, our track and yard systems are privately owned. We pay for all of our improvements."
— Jim Wrinn

Let me break that down for you: doubletrack = speed. This is a big deal. BNSF is putting a lot of money into this - and creating the premier route from the West Coast to Chicago in the process. The old Santa Fe is really moving now.