(The following story by Ann Bailey appeared on the Grand Forks Herald website on May 27.)
GRAND FORKS, N.D. — A section of Burlington Northern Santa Fe Railway track near Langdon, N.D., likely will be abandoned by the end of June.
The 20.93-mile section of track is among nearly 50 miles that the railroad company plans to abandon in North Dakota. In April, the company notified the North Dakota Public Service Commission of its intent to abandon the track and last week filed a notice with the Surface Transportation Board to abandon it. The notice of abandonment was filed in the May 21 Federal Register.
The abandonment will be effective June 22 if there are no petitions filed by shippers or if there are no environmental issues involved.
Wales (N.D.) Farmers Elevator Inc., which is served by the line, will not file a petition to protest the abandonment, said Mark Fisk, elevator manager.
“We don’t use it a whole lot anyway,” he said. Instead, Fisk said the elevator, which handles only canola, trucks the oilseed to crushing plants.
Burlington Northern Santa Fe also this week filed notice to abandon a 15.5-mile section of track near Westhope, N.D. The railroad company on Wednesday had not yet filed abandonment notices on three other sections of North Dakota track sections that it had in April notified the North Dakota PSC it intended to abandon. Those sections include 6.5 miles of track between Hannah Junction and McCanna, N.D.