Union Pacific Opens California Route for Double-Stack Intermodal Service
This story appears in the Dec. 7 print edition of Transport Topics.
Union Pacific Railroad opened a route through California’s Donner Pass to domestic double-stack intermodal container service, enabling the railroad to operate longer, faster trains.
The project, with an estimated cost of $25 million to $30 million, gives the railroad the ability to run trains that are 9,000 feet long, instead of the 5,700 foot trains that could be accommodated before on a more circuitous route. The route was opened Nov. 19 through the Sierra Nevada Mountains is 73 miles shorter and can be traversed three hours faster than another UP line between the Reno, Nev., area and Oakland, Calif.
The Donner Pass route, carved out of the mountains during the 1860’s, originally was owned by the Southern Pacific Railroad, which Union Pacific bought in 1996. Its other route between the cities is known as the Feather River Canyon Route.
“This project will benefit our customers by improving our intermodal transit times compared to the current Feather River Canyon route,” said John Kaiser, UP’s vice president and general manager for intermodal. “Completing this project will help us better serve our customers while supporting economic growth in Northern California and at the Port of Oakland.”
The Donner Pass clearance project is the latest move by railroads to enhance double-stack train service, which can handle as many as 300 containers, each 40 feet or longer, per train.
In the East, CSX Corp. is working on clearance improvements in several states along the East Coast. Norfolk Southern Corp. is clearing a path for double-stack trains through the Blue Ridge Mountains in Virginia.
The Feather River Canyon line follows the river with the same name as it winds through the mountain range. UP bought the Western Pacific Railroad, which operated over that route, in 1983.
Clearing the way for double-stacked containers required enlargement of 15 tunnels. The railroad used either a process called “notching,” which raises the corners of tunnels to accommodate the rectangular-shaped containers, or it lowered the tracks by digging out rocks and ballast below them to create clearances of 20 feet, 9 inches.
More than 3.5 miles of tunnel roofs were notched in the stretch between Rocklin and Truckee, Calif.
Also, signal systems were upgraded to allow centralized control of freight, replacing train dispatching that previously was done by radio.
“Our Feather River Canyon route will continue to play a strategic role in how we serve our customers,” Kaiser said. “The combined benefits of the Donner Pass improvements and our existing Feather River Canyon route will provide additional flexibility.”
The railroad plans to reroute trains carrying products such as grain and ethanol over the Feather River route and replace them with double-stack service, spokesman Tom Lange said. Between 15 and 18 trains per day use the Donner Pass route, he said.
The Donner route also includes snow sheds that were built to protect the tracks from drifting and avalanches. Those snow sheds are still in place, Lange said.
“The Donner Tunnel project is a great example of how Union Pacific capital investments continue to support our customers’ ability to grow,” CEO Jim Young said in a statement dated Nov. 23.
