BNSF resumes work on ‘Funnel’ Sandpoint railway project

SANDPOINT – A major railroad project is underway in Northern Idaho that is unique in the nation.

In railroad slang, a funnel is where multiple rail routes merge down to share just one rail corridor through a region. The last remaining funnel on a major transcontinental rail line in the United States is in Idaho.

All the east-west rail traffic across the top of the country is squeezed onto a single 68-mile rail corridor between Sandpoint and Spokane. Sections of that corridor run over a single set of tracks.

After halting work for the winter, the BNSF Railway Company started up construction work in preparation of doubling the rails on the single-tracked section of the funnel through Sandpoint in late March.

“Crews and equipment are doing work between West Algoma and Sandpoint,” BNSF spokesman Gus Melonas told the Idaho Business Review. “They are currently doing vegetation removal and grading work. Of course, the work has been slowed down by (safety measures due to) the coronavirus.”

The single track on the Sandpoint end of the funnel is only one of two sections of rail along the funnel that run on just one set of tracks. The section is three miles long and starts in the West Algoma area on the south shore of Lake Pend Oreille. It includes the one-mile bridge over the lake plus a second smaller bridge over Sand Creek as the single track enters the City of Sandpoint. North of Sand Creek, the last portion of single track services the Sandpoint Amtrak Station.

The other single-track section on the funnel is a 4-mile section between Irvin and Otis Orchards, Washington, just east of Spokane.

To double the rails on the single-tracked section through Sandpoint, BNSF plans to build a 4,874-foot-long bridge 50 feet west of the existing rail bridge over the lake, which will remain in active use during construction. The new bridge will have 49 spans over 48 piers using pre-cast pre-stressed I-girders and a cast-in-place deck.

The railroad will also build a second bridge over Sand Creek that will parallel the existing span. It too will remain in service while the new bridge is built.

BNSF began site preparation and grading work on the north shore of the lake in September 2019 for that bridge. Melonas said that the railroad has not announced a new date when the bridge construction or rail work might begin.

“We anticipate the bridge contractor will mobilize some equipment to the site in March 2020,” BNSF spokesman Courtney Wallace told The Bonner County Daily Bee on March 12.

Melonas did not indicate whether the workers currently working on the single-track section through Sandpoint included crews from the bridge contractor.

BNSF is also paying for and building temporary and permanent trails on the Sandpoint shoreline to ensure that people can continue to use the cycling and pedestrian paths throughout construction.

Since BNSF announced its intent to build the new rail bridge over the lake, the project has generated a small storm of local controversy over its environmental impact. The railroad weathered a fractious environmental review and permitting process prior to beginning site preparation for the new bridge last autumn.

BNSF has been working persistently on doubling all the rails along the Spokane to Sandpoint funnel over the last several years. In October, the railroad completed the installation of 2.5 miles of second main track on the funnel near Westmond, Idaho, which replaced the last remaining single-track gap between two larger sections of already double-tracked main line. Now the only single-track sections left are on the Sandpoint and Irwin, Washington ends of the funnel.

The Spokane to Sandpoint funnel is famous with railroad fans, especially on the Sandpoint end. The 68-mile funnel is the convergence of the former Great Northern and Northern Pacific railroads through northern and central Montana, which merged into the Burlington Northern system in 1970. The Union Pacific and Montana Rail Link lines also merge through the funnel on their way across Idaho. More than 50 trains pass through the funnel at Sandpoint every day.