BNSF track projects, WA State 2014

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New work also included is making the Low line in Everett a mainline and moving all of the switching from Bayside over to Delta. Proceeding with a long 2 year project of double tracking from Swift to Custer. The Swift extra siding project and the Mount Vernon siding extension, as per WSDOT, all this year.
 
Undercutter at work

On Friday (3-21-2014) I found the undercutter working the Scenic Subdivision between Everett Jct. and the old depot on the Hi-Line. Work started after 1007 passed and ended when the Sounders arrived.

Photo1: the equipment moves up Main 2 from MP31 to Everett Jct.

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Photo2: The undercutter moves into position. Before he starting cutting, a hi-rail backhoe was digging something out, maybe a drain?

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Photo 3: The undercutter working westward on the Hi-Line towardEverett Jct. The Low-Line is in the foreground. This is quite an impressive machine to watch. From my angle it was impossible to see the cut it was making.

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Photo4: The bad ballast is sent up the conveyor belt. It was making a large mount in from of the machine.

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Photo5: A head-on wedge-view of the machine in action.

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Photo6: As the undercutter got closer to where the Hi-Line and Low-Line converge at Everett Jct, there was no room to pile up the ballast, so after an empty coal train headed south, the slot train backed out onto the Low-Line so the undercutter could put the ballast into the slot train.

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Photo7: A close-up view of the slot train being filled up.

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Photo8: The rest of the MoW crew follows behind the undercutter.

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Photo9: A ballast train dumps ballast from Everett Jct. eastward.

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After the ballast got dumped I left. As I was leaving the DS was telling the foreman that the first Sounder was at MP27.
-KristopherJ
 
The project going from Sand to Lind had to remove one of the pillars of the old Milwaukee Road bridge there on March 15th.DSC_9012.jpg

Dan
 
Shoulder ballast cleaner? Undercutter? Working on the Stampede in Kennewick.
 

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More on the Stampede at Kennewick. What does a BDS-100 do? Will be checking the Plasser American webpage.
 

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The project going from Sand to Lind had to remove one of the pillars of the old Milwaukee Road bridge there on March 15th.View attachment 128687

Dan
That is kind of sad. Granted, these aren't remnants of some Roman aqueduct but they are a reminder of the role the Milwaukee Road played in Washington State. I was impressed and reflective when I saw them a few years ago. I'm having a hard time finding an image of this bridge when it was active. Can anyone find one and provide a link?
 
Thanks,Todd! That's exactly what I wanted to see. Interesting to see how the surviving pieces fitted into the working structure.
 
Interesting about the English siding project. I know one of the farmers real well, but he actually leases a little bit of the land from the BNSF on the far north end.
 
MP 85 upgraded from 35 MPH to 50 MPH effective 4/7/14 with new tri light signal cantilevers. They moved the whole control point more than 1000 feet southward.
 
Today BNSF was putting up chipboard shielding on the overpass railings in Yakima; must mean they're going to be doing their ballast work through town shortly. Wonder if the local bangers and wannabes will do their thing tonight ...
 
They're doing the same thing with the Napavine South and Vader crossovers: building a whole new set immediately south of the existing set of crossovers.

According to a PSA on the onboard video monitors, many track projects are in progress to speed up Cascades service. Are these crossovers being replaced with higher speed ones?

I rode a Cascades from Edmonds to Vancouver (WA) earlier this year. I was surprised at how much the train had to slow down through the crossovers at these locations. IIRC, track speed for the Talgo is 65mph through this area, but the train had to slow down to about 35mph to negotiate the crossovers.
 
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