Why does the Coast Starlight go east of the Cascades?

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Matthew H Fish

Lead Service Attendant
Joined
May 28, 2019
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499
This is a question that has been puzzling me for a while:

North of Redding, the Coast Starlight goes east over the Cascades through northern California, through Klamath Falls and Chemult, before heading back west to Eugene.

To me, the route following the I-5 corridor seems to make more sense. It passes through larger cities (Medford, Grants Pass, Roseburg), and it avoids crossing the Cascades twice. In its current route, it zig-zags out of its way to visit one small city (Klamath Falls). It is great for the view on the train, but it seems to not be very efficient.

I am sure there is some reason for this, as far as route selection goes, but it is probably buried deep in railroading history. Does anyone here know why this is?
 
There was a rail line that followed I-5 between Mt. Shasta and Eugene. However, the line is extremely winding and has steep grades as it goes directly through the mountains. Currently the line is used by a short-haul route. Given its age and the terrain. Any attempts at intercity rail are going to require completely new construction
 
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The Natron Cutoff between Black Butte, CA and Springfield, OR was opened in the 1920s and is shorter, much much less curvy, and the grades are less than the Siskiyou line through Medford it replaced. You know all the passes I5 goes up and down between Roseburg and Grant's Pass? The Siskiyou line is meandering along creeks to avoid them. Then there is the question of steep Siskiyou Summit. The Natron Cutoff significantly reduced the travel time. Construction of it was a major investment by SP.

When Amtrak came in in 1971, there had been no passenger service on the Siskiyou line since the locals came off in the 50s, while the Natron Cutoff still hosted the Cascade, the Starlight's direct ancestor. The Siskiyou line was slow. and very much a secondary line. The SP mainline was the Natron Cutoff and had been since it was opened.

BTW, i have been given to understand by a trucker friend that parallel OR 58 and US 97 are actually shorter than I 5.
 
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Good info above. I can add that for Oregon DOT I was asked in 1974 to include the SIskiyou Line in the emergency planning for dealing with the then Energy Crisis. I had access to SP engineering data, operating timetables and the 1940's and 50's schedules. My conclusion was that a through train on that line would be five hours slower than the Cascade Line trains.

The Oregon & California Railroad was built as cheaply as possible in order to obtain land grants. There was so much corruption that some of the grants were withdrawn, resulting in some Oregon counties having little private property.

Construction of the Natron Cut-off became a priority when the Hill lines entered the picture. One outcome of that is that the BNSF-UP Inside Gateway route from KFS to PDX via the Deschutes Canyon is faster than the Siskiyou Line.
 
BTW, i have been given to understand by a trucker friend that parallel OR 58 and US 97 are actually shorter than I 5.

This didn't sound right to me at first, but lo and behold, according to Google Maps, it is two miles shorter from Redding to Eugene if you take a right at Weed.

I guess it is a matter of I-5 taking a lot of little turns that all add up.
 
Good info above. I can add that for Oregon DOT I was asked in 1974 to include the SIskiyou Line in the emergency planning for dealing with the then Energy Crisis. I had access to SP engineering data, operating timetables and the 1940's and 50's schedules. My conclusion was that a through train on that line would be five hours slower than the Cascade Line trains.

The Oregon & California Railroad was built as cheaply as possible in order to obtain land grants. There was so much corruption that some of the grants were withdrawn, resulting in some Oregon counties having little private property.

Construction of the Natron Cut-off became a priority when the Hill lines entered the picture. One outcome of that is that the BNSF-UP Inside Gateway route from KFS to PDX via the Deschutes Canyon is faster than the Siskiyou Line.

This technical explanation makes a lot of sense.

I was also looking at demographic data. Josephine, Jackson and Douglas County had a combined population of 200,000 people in 1970, and have over 400,000 today. Klamath County had a population of 50,000 in 1970...and a population of under 70,000 today. So the difference in population wasn't so marked at that time.
 
Some other background on how this came about. For two generations, the O&C, which came under the Oregon Division of the SP, had a monopoly and acted like one. The exceptions were small coastal steamers and river boats on the Willamette and Sacramento Rivers.

As the 20th century began, the SP was suddenly faced with a three-pronged attack by the Hill lines (BNSF today). The SP&S began running boat trains on the Astoria line, coordinated with the "twin palaces of the North Pacific" --- the S.S. Great Northern and S.S. Northern Pacific to San Francisco. The Oregon Electric Railway bought parlor lounge and sleeping cars in planning to link up with the fellow interurban Sacramento Northern. And complete with shootings and sabotage, the Oregon Trunk was building along the Deschutes south from Wishram. The Gould interests were pushing west from Salt Lake City with the Western Pacific and David Moffat was publicly speculating about extending the Denver & Salt Lake into Oregon.

The Harriman lines (UP today) responded with several major projects, among them the Natron Cut-off (the Chemult to Oakridge segment of the Cascade Line).

The wave of construction ended in 1931 with completion of the Inside Gateway link between the Hill lines and the Western Pacific. A timetable for the San Francisco section of the Empire Builder was published, but never implemented.

Riding Amtrak, one may see traces of this story: the Astoria line diverging to the northwest at Willbridge, the parallel OE Rwy track at the Willamette River crossing near Harrisburg and Albany, the BNSF freights on trackage rights between Chemult and Merrill (KFS), and the Oregon Trunk wye and bridge at Wishram.

https://oregonhistoryproject.org/na...0/railroads-into-central-oregon/#.XjPLNmdmNNQ
 
I don't know if the OP has ever driven over the Siskiyou summit on I5, but it is quite the climb. One that would require additional locos to negotiate which would cost the railroads more money. Here's a link that includes an old https://zierke.com/shasta_route/pages/32siskiyou.html timetable, note the time to get from Ashland to Weed - Lv Weed 2:22 Ar Ashland 7:10.
 
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I don't know if the OP has ever driven over the Siskiyou summit on I5, but it is quite the climb. One that would require additional locos to negotiate which would cost the railroads more money. Here's a link that includes an old https://zierke.com/shasta_route/pages/32siskiyou.html timetable, note the time to get from Ashland to Weed - Lv Weed 2:22 Ar Ashland 7:10.
Siskiyou Summit on the former SP has a ruling grade around 3%. It also loops around all over. The north (SP west) side stays fairly close to I5, although with horseshoes. The south side wanders WAYYY off to the west to keep the grade down.

It is a slowwww piece of railroad.
 
Rerouting to reach the population is always worth it, but 5 hours travel time difference implies a lot of railroad upgrades to make it viable. Oregon probably will never look at this part of the state, so it probably can't happen.
 
Even if trains did run down the Siskiyou Line, it may not even serve enough people to be worth it compared to some other rail/transit priority Oregon could think of. There was a reason why the SP reduced traffic on that line to local traffic until mail trains got killed off. And upgrading the line would require billions to connect a relatively small portion of the population. Upgrading it might make sense if it were to connect with California, but since we are putting peanuts into trains, that wouldn't happen. And there still would be an easier to deal with line with less mountains. It's kind of why Tejon wasn't built. Tehachapi is just easier to deal with, same with the Cascade Line.
 
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