TRAINS: Conduct common sense

I am mystified why even a BNSF weekly used railroad spur has crossing gates in Post Falls on McGuire Road but the four or so trains daily on a Union Pacific (UP) line likely carrying Canadian tar sands oil trains through Kootenai County doesn’t have a crossing gate on Spokane Street?

Is Spokane Street less worthy than McGuire? The BNSF mainline, a local BNSF spur and UP all have crossing gates on McGuire. The BNSF spur crossing gate was installed in 2015.

The rarely used BNSF spur goes by the asphalt distribution center by Pleasant View at Prairie and makes its way across Seltice between Spokane and Chase on a bridge and has a crossing gate on Pleasant View and McGuire.

Tuesday’s fatal tragedy happened on the 140-mile long old Spokane International railroad that merged with Union Pacific in 1959. I used to count the cars in Millwood on my walk home from Millwood Elementary School. More than 100 cars once! I still love watching trains.

But UP is one in the same railroad that crashed an oil train in Oregon near the Columbia River. I believe that train went through Post Falls on this track which meets the Canadian Pacific railroad northeast of Bonners Ferry. UP doesn’t cross northern Montana. Both the UP and the BNSF go through Sandpoint.

UP (which merged with Southern Pacific) also had a runaway train in So Cal that finally left the tracks at triple digit speed and destroyed a few homes.

So let’s not condemn BNSF with UP.

And let’s at least get a crossing gate and eliminate the uphill slope away from the track on Spokane Street where kids slid on ice into a moving UP train!

MIKE RENO

Post Falls