BNSF & UP on the Tacoma, Portland Joint Line

For well over a century the busiest rail line in the Pacific Northwest has been BNSF’s Seattle Subdivision between Seattle and Vancouver Washington on the north bank of the Columbia River opposite Portland, Oregon. For seventy years this former Northern Pacific main known as the Joint Line carried the trains of the NP, Great Northern, and Union Pacific.

Today BNSF is the owner and Union Pacific and Amtrak are the tenants. UP has full trackage rights between Vancouver and Tacoma while Amtrak’s Coast Starlight and four pair of Cascades traverse the full length of the Seattle sub between Seattle and Vancouver. BNSF and UP rail traffic between Seattle, Tacoma, and Portland utilize all or parts of this line and the joint line is also part of UP’s transcontinental main line from Chicago to Seattle.

We caught over twenty-four hours of action on the BNSF and UP Tacoma to Portland Joint Line between Napavine and Kelso in May of 2018. The tonnage if not the number of trains on the Joint Line is at or near an all-time peak as the number of unit coal, grain, and crude oil trains seems to increase each year. And northbounds greatly outnumber southbounds on BNSF here as most unit train empties head east at Auburn over Stampede Pass.