BNSF investing $180 million in Montana railways this year

Burlington Northern Santa Fe Railway last week announced it would spend about $180 million in its rail services this year in Montana. That includes replacing 7,000 ties and 11 miles of rail between Whitefish and East Glacier, said spokesman Matt Jones.

The railway employs more than 2,000 people statewide.

Jones said the railway also invested about $180 million in Montana infrastructure last year and since 2013, has invested about $500 million total.

With the slump in oil prices, train and other freight traffic is down this year compared to previous years. Even so, BNSF hauled 1.9 million units through Montana in 2015. A unit is an individual rail car, container or trailer.

BNSF’s maintenance program statewide includes more than 950 miles of track surfacing and/or undercutting work, the replacement of about 120 miles of rail and close to 285,000 ties, as well as signal upgrades for federally-mandated positive train control. Positive train control is designed to automatically stop a train in certain situations, like to avoid train-to-train collisions, derailments caused by excessive speed and movement of a train through a switch left in the wrong position.

Jones said that once implemented, BNSF would be able to stop a train from its Fort Worth, Texas control center remotely in Montana through the system.

The company, under new federal regulations, will have to eventually meet new braking standards for cars, including an electronically controlled pneumatic braking system for crude oil trains of 70-plus cars by Jan. 1, 2021 or reduce speeds to 30 mph. For other highly flammable trains, the new braking system has to be in place by May 2023 or adhere to a 30 mph speed limit.

The federal railroad and pipeline safety administration is also requiring the implementation of DOT117 tank cars to haul crude oil. Any tank car manufactured after October 2015 had to meet the standards and older “least safe” tank cars that currently don’t meet those standards have to be brought up to the standard, or be replaced by 2018.

BNSF doesn’t own the tank cars it hauls, Jones noted. The new rules are in response to several train derailments over the past few years where tank cars have exploded, killing people and forcing the evacuation of entire towns.

The concern regionally is a tank car derailment, if it happened along the southern boundary of Glacier National Park, could cause a fire and foul the Middle Fork of the Flathead river, which is a world-class scenic river.