Oil train at Everett Station, 9-14-2014
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- Опубліковано 15 вер 2024
- It's warm Sunday in September (86 deg!) and I'm trying a new railfanning location at Everett Station in Everett, WA. Everett is a medium-sized city about 30 miles north of Seattle.
Listening to my scanner, I know a train is coming so I head up onto the pedestrian overpass to get an overhead viewpoint.
It turns out to be a loaded oil train led by BNSF 4402 (C44-9W). This is crude oil from the Bakken formation in North Dakota headed to the Tesoro refinery in Anacortes, WA.
The train slowed to a stop in front of the station. Dispatch had told them to expect a red signal at PA Junction. They were instructed to call Dispatch and she would give them verbal permission to pass the signal. I caught this radio conversation on the video as the crew was talked past the signal.
Once they started moving, I switched vantage points on the bridge. You can see the train take the crossover from the mainline to the "Short Pass" track, then onto the "C-Line" track. That track makes a 180degree turn enroute to Delta Yard. From the yard they'll continue north onto the Bellingham Sub to Anacortes.
In the background are three Sounder commuter trainsets, waiting to make their Monday morning runs down to Seattle.
4402 / 7386 / 5132 / 6720
C44-9W / ES44DC / C44-9W / ES44C4
Top stuff SRF ! I appreciate the closeup overhead shots as I have many ethanol cars and GE locos to weather, so this is a great chance to get the colours and effects right!
Thanks for another top video.
Cheers Gregg
Good job Seattle Rail fan. Good photo/filming location. Catching an oil train like this, what a steal! Thank you for the explanations and for sharing your work with us.
The refinery gets 4 or 5 oil trains a week, so they are fairly common around here.
Great video. Thanx for the explanations. . . I'd have thought they were blowing a red light & would never have known what had happened to that first pusher.
Thanks for sharing! Appreciate the explanatory comments ...
Your welcome. I like to annotate my videos with relevant information as not all viewers are longtime railfans. And many viewers aren't from the Seattle area so I like to give some explanation of what tracks are in use, where a train is headed, etc.
Appreciate that...makes any video that much more enjoyable!
Thanks!
Nice video! Thank you!
Wow! That's a long train!! Excellent catch!!
It seems very long because the train is traveling slow. The oil trains are around 100-105 cars long, which is about the average length of trains around here.
oh really, thanks for sharing
SeattleRailFan
How much does each tank car hold ?
Dark O. These are 30,000 gallon cars (about 714 barrels). A 100-car train would be about 3 million gallons or 71,400 barrels if all where full. I don't know if they fill each car full or not. Probably depends on how much the refinery needs at that time.
yes it also depends on the manufacturer of the car. cuz some manufacturers put smaller and lighter trucks, on the cars which means the car can't be filled up all the way
Sure was a long train Todd!! Enjoyed the video
Very nice. Hope to see more from the Everett area. There's lots of rail fan locations.
My next video is also from Everett. I'll get it up in a week or so.
Can see where the term "Pipeline on rails" comes into being.
Nice video, will you be doing some videos in the Sumner/Puyallup area soon?
Probably not. I mostly railan at work. I'm a small package courier and when I have no deliveries to make, I head for the nearest tracks to see what's happening. Our current business mostly has me in the Renton/Kent area up to Everett. I don't get south of there very much. Maybe if I go out on a weekend, I'd hit the south end.
I have a couple of questions about the route this train is taking:
What route did it take from North Dakota and why didn't it take the old GN route from the east?
Why did it take the high route through Everett and not use the mainline by the waterfront bypassing Delta Yard?
I watch trains from this spot a lot and a, always curious when a train cuts under Everett through the tunnel to head north. Thanks for your videos!
I believe the oil trains use the BNSF Northern Trascon to Spokane, then they go down to Pasco. From Pasco, they head down the Colombia River to Vancouver, WA, then north to Seattle, Everett and eventually Anacortes.
This route has less of a grade than Stevens Pass (the GN route). Railroads prefer to run heavy trains on as little grade as possible. It costs fuel (fuel=$$$) to go up a grade and going down a grade is hard on brakes, hard on the tracks and increases the risk of derailments.
Other factors are that the Stevens Pass route is heavily used by high priority stack trains from Chicago, both east and westbound. Also, the Amtrak Empire Builder uses that route. So they want slower, lower priority trains to use the Pasco-Vancouver-Seattle route.
Also, BNSF is now running a scheme they call the "Iron Triangle". Picture a triangle: Seattle to Pasco via Stampede Pass, Pasco to Vancouver, Vancouver to Seattle. Each leg is run one-way only. The Stampede Pass route is eastbound trains only. Westbound trains go to Pasco, then Vancouver then Seattle. Running a single track line one-way only increases the amount of trains that can use the line.
Crews out of Seattle run a train on one leg of the triangle, overnight, run the next leg, overnight and then get back to Seattle on the third day.
As for why the train was on the high line. If an oil train is running through Everett non-stop to Anacortes, it'd probably the the low line on the west side of the city then run onto the Bellingham Sub up to Anacortes. That the quickest, most direct route.
I'm guessing this train was stopping in Everett to wait it's turn to head up to the refinery. So they use the high line to access Delta Yard. Very common to see oil trains parked at Delta.
Another possibility is that the low line track was plugged up with another train. I've seen that happen as well. In that case, a through train would use the high line route to get over to Delta then to the Bellingham Sub.
Whew!
Thanks so much for the detailed answer!