While new bridges and additional segments of second main track have been at the forefront of BNSF’s recent developments in the Pacific Northwest, the company has logged an additional milestone in terms of infrastructure and operational improvements for the region. Sept. 1, 2024 marked the 20th anniversary of BNSF’s Main Line Refueling Depot at Hauser, Idaho. Located along the busiest stretch of BNSF’s Northern Corridor, Hauser is where trains moving to and from seaports, industries and agriculture centers in the Northwest can pull over and service their locomotives with minimal delay.
Hauser was a little-known staging yard during much of the 1970s and ’80s, but its importance grew following the Burlington Northern + Santa Fe merger in 1995. Just prior to the 1970 merging of Northern Pacific, Great Northern and other railways into BN, land was purchased adjacent to the NP main line at Hauser with the intention of building a new classification yard that would outperform older, smaller yards elsewhere in the Northwest. Tracklaying began at Hauser in 1972, but by the 1980s the facility had grown to no more than nine yard tracks (plus an additional track equipped for in-motion weighing of unit grain trains), far short of the 76-track yard that BN originally envisioned. The U.S. was in the midst of an economic recession, and BN had spent its first decade investing billions of dollars on post-merger improvements elsewhere across its system.
By the 1990s, Hauser saw increased use not just for unit grains trains being staged for arrival at Northwest ports but also for re-blocking or combining trains carrying intermodal and automobiles into and out of the region. Being situated near the middle of BNSF’s so-called “Funnel” between Spokane, Wash., and Sandpoint, Idaho, Hauser Yard became an increasingly important sorting point for traffic flowing on multiple routes to the east and west. BN halted further expansion of Hauser’s yard capacity, but BNSF recognized it as the perfect place to improve another part of its Northwest operations: locomotive servicing.
During 1997-98, BNSF added three new yard tracks at Hauser, lengthened existing tracks, and graded the roadbed for what would ultimately become four new main lines guiding trains through a run-through refueling facility. Conventional practice at the time called for locomotives to be removed from trains and given fuel, sand, and other servicing at stand-alone engine facilities. For BNSF, this delayed the handling of nearly all train types through various terminals in western Montana, Washington, and northwest Oregon.
When officially opened on Sept.1, 2004, the Hauser refueling facility changed everything in the way BNSF moved commerce in the Northwest. Unit trains hauling grain or coal (and eventually oil) to West Coast terminals could now have their head-end locomotives and rear-end distributed power (DP or DPU) locomotives fueled while still attached to the train. Servicing would take place on newly built main tracks, each one long enough to leave the way clear for other trains to arrive and depart the adjacent yard or pass by on the pair of primary main tracks.
Unit trains serviced at Hauser can reach their West Coast destinations, unload their cargo and return to Hauser for their next refueling. Some trains carrying intermodal, automobiles or mixed manifest freight may also receive servicing on the Hauser fuel pad. Being a servicing stop made Hauser an ideal place to change crews, instead of doing so at Yardley yard in Spokane. Trains with only head-end power can be in and out of Hauser in 30 minutes or less. Trains with power at both ends may take slightly closer to an hour.
When first opened in 2004, the Hauser facility featured two run-through refueling tracks (Mains 4 and 5), plus a shorter track (Main 3) with limited access for servicing light power or short trains. A third run-through fueling track (Main 6) was added in 2006. In 2017, track was finally extended on both ends of Main 3, giving Hauser four full-length run-through refueling mains. Also in 2017, the refueling mains and yard leads at the east end of Hauser were reconfigured to accommodate occasional double-length trains. These trains are roughly two miles long and handle close to 220 cars, with locomotives at the front, middle, and rear. Main 6 now has enough added capacity at its east end to allow servicing of power at the middle and west end of a double-length train without fouling other tracks or blocking road crossings.
A few hundred feet from the Hauser refueling pad is a slightly larger facility with three tracks, where tank cars carrying diesel fuel arrive and occasional tank cars of wastewater depart. Diesel is offloaded for storage into a pair of 250,000-gallon above-ground tanks. On its busiest days, Hauser can dispense more than 380,000 gallons of fuel. To better protect the sole-source aquifer beneath Hauser, BNSF opted for delivery of fuel by rail instead of by pipeline or truck.
In fact, nearly everything about the Hauser refueling facility was designed with the aquifer in mind. Double polyethylene liners are buried beneath the reinforced concrete pads. All pipes carrying fuel, lube oil or wastewater are double-walled with pressurized nitrogen inside the outer jacket, which will trigger automatic shutoff valves if a leak is detected. Large canopies cover both the fuel offloading terminal and the train refueling pad to minimize rain or snow accumulation on surfaces where runoff would have to be captured and shipped out for treatment.
Of the 40 to 60 trains or more that pass Hauser on a given day, approximately half get serviced on one of the four refueling mains. Other trains tie down in Hauser Yard awaiting their outbound crew or change crews outside the yard on Mains 1 or 2. The record for daily throughput on the Hauser fuel pad currently stands at 46 trains, which were serviced on Dec. 15, 2018. On the same date in 2019, Hauser fueled a record 146 locomotives.
“The fueling facility in Hauser has been an essential part of maintaining successful operations across the Northern Corridor of our network,” says Craig Morehouse, BNSF Vice President North Region Operations. “It serves as one of the main sources of fuel for our trains moving between the Pacific Northwest and the Midwest with reduced terminal time, which enables us to transport freight much more efficiently.”
