BNSF Railroad building replacement bridge over Lake Pend Oreille

BNSF Railroad is building a bridge over Lake Pend Oreille at Sandpoint that will eliminate the one of the two remaining single-track sections on any of the nation’s transcontinental rail routes.

“The project will cost roughly $100 million,” BNSF spokesperson Courtney Wallace told the Idaho Business Review, “and it will take about three to five years to complete.”

In railroad slang, the bridge at Sandpoint is part of a funnel, which is where multiple rail routes merge down to share just one single-track corridor through a region. The last remaining transcontinental funnel in the United States is the 68 miles between Spokane and Sandpoint. BNSF, which owns the track, has been double-tracking the funnel over the last several years. Now just two sections are left: one at Sandpoint and one just east of Spokane which is also scheduled to be double-tracked.

Rail fans have making pilgrimages to the Sandpoint area for years because of the unparalleled opportunities for train photographs. More than 50 trains a day cross the old rail bridge over the lake. Many of those trains are sidetracked while waiting for traffic in the other direction to clear, including Amtrak’s Empire Builder between Chicago and Seattle. All those waiting trains have been a bonanza for those who love to snap pictures of trains.

After years of fighting delays in court due to environmental groups opposing the bridge work, BNSF started work in September 2019 to prep the sites where the future bridge will land on either side of the lake. That work resumed this spring as the bridge construction crews prepared the barge and equipment to start driving the piles for the bridge piers.

To double the rails over the lake, the new bridge will be 4,874-foot-long in a span spaced 50 feet west of the existing rail bridge. The new bridge will have 49 spans over 48 piers using pre-cast pre-stressed I-beam girders and a cast-in-place deck.

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 the bridge construction project.

Since BNSF announced its intent to build the new rail bridge over the lake, the project has generated a small storm of 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.