North Coast Hiawatha - Big Sky Passenger Rail Authority (BSPRA)

Most who go there aren't just going "to Yellowstone" --- they're taking the Great American Road Trip which involves seeing everything between their homes and northwest Wyoming.

Today, there are numerous daily flights into Bozeman or Billings from every major airline hub in America. But 40 years ago, that wasn't the case. If you wanted to go to Yellowstone, the Great American Road Trip was the only way to get there. There weren't any other options.

Today, a round-trip road trip from Minneapolis to Yellowstone requires about $350 in gas and at least 2 nights in motels somewhere in the scenic Dakotas (or 2 exhausting days of driving). Alternatively, a family could fly into BZN and rent a car for $150-200 per day, depending on how many people you have to carry. I haven't a clue about how much investment would be needed to launch a Yellowstone Auto Train, but I would like to study options other than exhausting or expensive.

You can't see or experience Yellowstone or the Tetons in less than 7 days... Autotrain might be cheaper than a 7 day rental, but it's not going to be cheaper than driving by a wide margin.

I've driven Chicago to Cody, WY with a single overnight, and that was at 62mph in a motorhome pulling a minivan... 600 a day miles works out to 12 hours with only fuel stops. Not what I'd call exhausting, but I know some people struggle to do 6- 8 hours in a car.

It's an hour longer than driving Chicago to Orlando, which tens of thousands of families from the Upper Midwest do each year, many in a straight shot without overnighting...

If Amtrak were going to add another Autotrain, it's not going to be to Billings or Bozeman. It's going to be NJ or CHI to Florida.



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Long before A-Day, the Class I roads understood that good destinations beget business. Hence, they connected to the parks.

Sadly, Amtrak has never understood that simple fact.

They did... and it was a 90-120 day service because of the snow. Roads aren't fully clear until late April and some close in October.



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Costs estimated: https://nbcmontana.com/amp/news/local/i ... rain-route

Initial cost estimates released for North Coast Hiawatha train route

...
The Federal Railroad Administration's Long Distance Survey Study estimated the cost to bring back the North Coast Hiawatha route. The roughly 2,300 trek would span seven states, including Montana.

The federal agency estimated five train sets necessary for a once a day service would cost up to $1.1 billion. Station and maintenance facility costs could be as much as $1.74 billion.

Track class upgrades may reach an additional $930 million, while the annual operation and maintenance is estimated to be as high as $136 million a year.

These figures do not include costs for potential large-scale projects like work addressing track capacity.
...

Hopefully, this report puts the final nail in the North Coast Limited's coffin.

It was one thing to have resumed this service some two months after A-Day; the BN/NP still had a ROW capable of supporting a passenger train. They still had a Passenger Department to support the "turnkey operation" that the roads were providing to Amtrak, as well as to wrap up their own affairs.

If you really wish to ride the route, which I think is far more scenic than is the GN, why not hitch a ride in one of the 737 fuselages being delivered to Boeing in Renton from their sub-contractor in Wichita?

The full report: https://fralongdistancerailstudy.org/wp ... _4_Web.pdf

There's a lot of interesting info in the final presentation on all the proposed LD expansions (if you happen to be a wonk). The cost models are pretty basic and only cover minimally viable service levels. There aren't any ridership projections, either. I imagine most of the track upgrades for the NCH would be concentrated on the Missoula to Spokane or Seattle to Pasco segments. Stampede Pass may be pretty, but it has a curvy track profile with lots of ups-and-downs that slow down passenger train schedules.

If there are billion$ available for LD upgrades, I would prefer to see the money allocated to alleviating the current bottlenecks on the existing network before creating more trains and their inevitable bottlenecks. But a couple of next steps might be to see if there is value in creating a state supported corridor between Billings and Missoula, and if a daylight train between Seattle and Spokane via Stevens Pass (not Stampede Pass) would be feasible.

If there are billion$ available for LD upgrades, I would prefer to see the money allocated to alleviating the current bottlenecks on the existing network before creating more trains and their inevitable bottlenecks.

This x1000. I keep saying this. They are doing a bad job of running the current trains. Why start more bad trains?

I have some constructive criticism of the Borealis but overall the concept is pretty sound. An extra frequency on a medium corridor with a fairly friendly host. No class-1 handoffs. This is a win.

Instead of starting a NCH, why not put a second frequency on the PDX and SEA routes out of Spokane with just coaches? And maybe a Spokane-Glacier train to boot for the tourists, even if its just seasonal. Currently Spokane sees trains at midnight and 3am which is not conducive to heavy corridor travel.

This also would mean there are more passengers on a single route, which means money spent to upgrade stations, offerings, and services as well as infrastructure is better spent.

Tadman wrote: ↑Fri Jul 12, 2024 10:39 am Instead of starting a NCH, why not put a second frequency on the PDX and SEA routes out of Spokane with just coaches? And maybe a Spokane-Glacier train to boot for the tourists, even if its just seasonal. Currently Spokane sees trains at midnight and 3am which is not conducive to heavy corridor travel.

This also would mean there are more passengers on a single route, which means money spent to upgrade stations, offerings, and services as well as infrastructure is better spent.

As a person planning a trip next month, I'd say make it to Glacier. The current service times there are nice, but having a second train to Whitefish, even if only seasonal, probably wouldn't hurt. There's a lot of beautiful scenery there and with Spokane and the like, several large cities. And let's be honest, from Glacier eastward, there's not much until you get to St. Paul, so I doubt you'd get much traffic on a second route there, even seasonally.

Something this morning made me finally look at the map of the North Coast Hiawatha vs. Empire Builder, and omg how did we wind up with the EB instead of the NCH? The EB goes nowhere except Glacier. It misses all the population in both North Dakota and Montana. Was / is the route that much faster? Or was the NCH host that much less passenger friendly back then. I vote not for adding NCH but for replacing EB with NCH.

I also hadn't realized the Fargo/W. Fargo/Moorhead area had 220,000 people. I'd think the next step along the NCH route would be a ND/MN-funded MSP-Fargo train, eventually extended to Bismarck. Too bad more of Fargo's population isn't in Minnesota, with its greater appetite for rail.

Bismarck is only 80,000 people, but its airport has the 3 majors and Allegiant, with 4 round trips to MSP, 3 to Denver, 3 to Dallas a couple sun country solo trips. I get that many of those are carrying connecting passengers, but I still think an MSP train could find its footing and cut into a bit of that air traffic.

Mr. Ryan, you'll find that the Incorporates had an "end point mentality", and for whatever, all they could think of was in terms of Chicago-Seattle.

No question, having ridden them both pre-Amtrak, the NP has far more on line markets to serve - and today, with the likes of Bozeman becoming "North Aspen", is even more the truth than it was fifty years ago.

Except for around Glacier, the GN is a comparative "scenic zero" - and Havre is."uh, not exactly" Bozeman.

Well, at least neither were "my MILW", which I'm sorry to say, served nothing, and where there was some traffic to speak of (Butte, Missoula), the on-line NP industries (as well as the GN in Great Falls) were all "closed" for any kind of ratemaking and reciprocal switching.

I think the EB routing decision was largely based on whether to go over Stevens Pass or Stampede Pass. If you compare the track charts, I think you will see that Stampede has lots of twists, turns and plenty of elevation gains and losses that make railroading difficult between Seattle and Spokane. Stevens Pass is much straighter and the elevation gain/loss along the route is "smoother" (for lack of a better technical turn). Stampede Pass was even closed for a few years after Amtrak came into existence (I don't remember exactly when). BN/BNSF also spun off the NCH line in MT to MRL. I think BN decided to only maintain one route between Seattle and Spokane and the EB was forced to adjust.

Thanks for the info.

This is just an anecdote, but I found this article's subhead interesting (article is behind paywall, but I found the subhead in Google news):
https://www.grandforksherald.com/news/n ... evils-lake
"Amtrak breaks down near Devil's Lake (ND). Amtrak to accommodate the 90 passengers on board at their expense."

I have been wondering how much of Empire Builder traffic is long-distance, how much is local Chicago-MSP, and how much is local in the NW. Not a lot of passengers were on board this particular March, 2023 train as it passed through North Dakota. This is just a single snapshot, of course.

Mr. Ryan, no question whatever that one of the arguments for the LD's the advocacy community sets forth is the service between intermediate points. However, there somewhere is documentation showing the end point mentality of the Incorporators (or more likely their consultants from the firm now named Accenture) prevailing - and the GN handled more end to end than did the NP. Likewise, the same rationality applied Chicago-LA in selecting the ATSF (the storied Super Chief and its Hollywood clientele also helped) over the UP Overland Route, which had more on line traffic sources.

Having been in the industry on A-Day (not involved with Amtrak affairs, but still "there" holding a Non-Agreement position), I once did get to review those Incorporator reports.