I tell you Uke...without a program its hard to figure out the current "flow of oil" through the GPNW right now. Everett Wa. has become a very important junction for empty trains going East, loads going north, loads coming south and through to Portland Or. I'm still trying to estimate how many oil trains through Everett there are. Got to be 2-3 lds/empties a day. Add that to 3-4 coal trains/empties a day plus 6 Amtrak trains and the BNSF Bham Sub has never seen this amount of traffic...ever. I never as a youngster growing up in Bham, that ever in my wildest dreams of the future, would I ever see a steady stream of coal trains (lds/empts) and oil trains (lds/emptys) and all the regular manifest trains and the local trains through Bham. This subdiv on the GN/BN had all kinds of rules/regulations/red-tape with getting locomotives across the Canadian Border. The BN Interbay Pool locomotives were specially designed to keep most of it's assigned locos ready to "cross into Canada". I'm not sure when...maybe mid-late 1980's, the BN/BNSF could run whatever they brung across the border. There was this staunch Canadian thing about the "lead unit has to have a snow-plow".. Of course you are all familiar with what most locomotive snow plows look like. How good of job they do was not important. You need a loco with a snow-plow to cross the Canadian Border. Well that no longer seems important.
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If you are in a horror movie, you make bad decisions, its what you do.
