(The following article by Thomas Ryll was posted on the Columbian website on November 20.)
VANCOUVER, Wash. — Once a year or so, the BNSF Railway hauls a few elephants through Vancouver
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However charming and offbeat it might be, business from the Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey folks will never make a railroad wealthy. It’s the hopper cars loaded to with grain, the long lines of jam-packed, double-stacked containers and the plastic-wrapped piles of freshly planed lumber that pay the bills. And with a steady upturn in rail business regionally and nationwide, things are starting to look like a three-ring circus.
Employment at BNSF’s Vancouver terminal, which includes operations in Portland, is growing. Grain shipments, BNSF’s biggest cargo in this area, are up 9 percent over 2004, the best year since the record-setting volumes of the mid-1990s. And 2006 may see a record, said Gus Melonas, BNSF spokesman in Seattle.
While the rail business may not exactly be in the spotlight shining on local employers, ‘‘Our role here is stronger than ever,’’ he said. ‘‘We’re moving more freight than we have in the history of the railroad.’’
Between 1996 and 2004, the terminal saw a 52 percent increase in the number of freight cars of all types starting or ending their trips. On a busy day, rail workers will switch 1,000 cars at BNSF’s west Vancouver yard, which also handles car repairs, light locomotive servicing and fueling.
Including Amtrak runs, some 65 to 70 trains pass through Vancouver every day; about 50 of them travel on the Columbia River Gorge line. Homeowners in posh residences along the BNSF east-west line here might as well make sure their fine china is securely battened down, as the ’round-the-clock rumbling is expected only to increase. The outlook, from an industry that is seeing record cargo volumes, is for more of the same.
‘‘The railroad industry is undergoing a real renaissance,’’ said Tony Hatch, an independent industry analyst and consultant in New York City.
Tom White, spokesman for the American Association of Railroads in Washington, D.C., said a significant component of the rail business upturn is due to intermodal traffic, the movement of over-the-road truck trailers and double-stacked cargo shipping containers. Twenty-five years ago the industry handled 3 million trailers and containers a year; in 2004 the total hit 11 million, and is on track for 11.5 million this year. For the week ending Oct. 22, the industry moved 250,000, the most ever.