The Most "Over-Railfanned" Train in the PNW?

Two classic EMD SD-40-2 locomotives pull an average-size Byron Turn into North Richland in late winter 2016.

Not too long ago, I remarked on the Pacific Northwest Railfans Facebook page that between my efforts and those of friend Richard Olson, BNSF’s “Byron Turn” may be the most over-railfanned train in the Pacific Northwest.  Determining whether this assertion is true would not only be impossible, but also a complete waste of time.  So just accept it as fact while I explain what I mean, then judge for yourself.

For this statement to make any sense to the uninitiated requires a couple definitions:

A railfan is an individual who is interested in railroads as a hobby, and pursues that interest by going out and watching, photographing, or video recording trains at work.  This is a slang term usually only used between the railfans themselves.  When describing myself to non-railfans, I prefer the term “railroad enthusiast”.  Meanwhile, professional railroaders may derisively refer to railfans as “foamers” because we can get very agitated, almost to the point of foaming at the mouth, if we happen to see something unusual, to us at least, about a particular locomotive or freight car.

Within railfan slang, the term itself can be used as a verb to describe the activity of watching and photographing trains, as in, “Let’s go railfanning” or “I ‘fanned that steam special a couple years ago” and so forth.

The Byron Turn (or Byron Local) is the daily train that BNSF Railway dispatches out of its Pasco, Washington yard to serve industries in nearby Kennewick and Richland.  It gets its name from a siding located just west of Prosser on BNSF’s former Northern Pacific mainline, which the railroad named Byron, probably for one of its long-forgotten shareholders or officers.  In theory, that siding is the westernmost extent of the territory served by the Byron Turn, but I don’t believe the train ever runs on that line beyond Kennewick today.

An eastbound Byron Turn traverses several miles of Union Pacific-owned tracks as it heads back to Pasco Yard.  This line through a mostly residential neighborhood provides a connection between the BNSF Yakima Valley Subdivision at Kennewick and the Port of Benton tracks at Richland Junction.  Here, GP-28M 1508 leads two cars.  The GP-28M is a BNSF-only model; the product of an extensive program in the BN days to convert old GP-9s to more modern standards.  May 2015

Instead, it exits the mainline a half mile west of the old Kennewick depot and enters Union Pacific’s old Yakima branch.  Using running rights on that route, the train continues west as far as Richland Junction, right next to the Columbia Center mall in far western Kennewick.  At this point, the train moves onto rails currently owned by the Port of Benton.

The US Government originally constructed the PoB line to serve the Hanford Nuclear Reservation several miles north of Richland.  As the Hanford Site’s mission shifted from plutonium production to environmental cleanup after the Cold War ended, the Department of Energy had no use for its railroad.  Local interests, however, were eager to restructure the local economy and infrastructure so they no longer focused so heavily on a single industry.  To this end, the Port of Benton acquired the DOE’s railroad.

GP-38-2 2334 hauls an average sized Byron Turn into North Richland, just passing the spur to the Lamb-Weston potato plant. April 2013

In addition, PoB, the City of Richland, and private interests have teamed up over time to develop additional business facilities in North Richland, several of which depend heavily on rail access.  The most obvious rail user is the Lamb-Weston potato processing plant.  It receives its spuds by truck, fries them in vegetable oil received by rail, flash freezes them, and ships them out as frozen French fries in refrigerated boxcars that keep it extremely cold while in transit.

Port of Benton's two tenant railroads, BNSF and the Tri-Cities RR, often work in close proximity in the N. Richland industrial area.  The newly constructed Preferred Freezer Services warehouse is, for now, the world's largest refrigerated storage facility, and a customer of both railroads.  BNSF 2630 is a rebuilt former GP-35 and TCRY 15 is a MP-15AC.  November 2015

Additional rail customers in North Richland include two grain transfer facilities and the world’s largest (for now) cold storage warehouse.  This warehouse both receives and ships loaded cars of French fries and other refrigerated foods as its many different customers require.  The grain facilities, meanwhile, receive grain cars, and often entire “unit trains”, loaded with cattle feed.  They unload the cars and send them on their way, and then load the feed onto trucks for delivery to many cattle feed lots in the surrounding region.

When PoB first obtained the rail link to Richland, they sought a contract operator to run the trains.  Tri-Cities Railroad (TCRY) was organized by private interests, and by purchasing DOE’s two surplus locomotives (both EMD model MP-15AC) and hiring crews, the TCRY went right to work serving customers – primarily the Lamb-Weston plant at first.

A well-matched pair of former Union Pacific SD-40-2s pulls the TCRY's daily train out of their N. Richland yard, headed for the UP interchange at Kennewick.  March 2016.

When I arrived in Richland 14 years ago, the TCRY was the only operator on the PoB line.  At first, the two MP-15s pulling strings of white look-alike refrigerator and black look-alike tank cars did not seem very inspiring.  It still isn’t, but when the TCRY also acquired and rebuilt a small fleet of SD-40-2s for use on its route, things got a little better.

But about 2009, I started seeing occasional splashes of green on the rails.  It appears BNSF suddenly remembered it had inherited rights from its Northern Pacific progenitor to run on the former DOE tracks.  BNSF already received some of the traffic that TCRY was hauling to Richland Jct.  But, by cutting out the middle man, BNSF expected to earn a greater share of the shipping tariffs – enough to offset the cost of running its own train out to Richland and still make a profit.

TCRY balked at this notion, believing their contract with PoB gave them an exclusive right to operate the line.  They took the issue to court, but lost, and BNSF trains have been sharing the use of the PoB line ever since.  TCRY still dispatches the line, and communicates with both crews using cell phones (I believe) to ensure neither train encroaches on the other while running.

The Kennewick Irrigation District's main canal provides a very scenic element for trains that cross it near Steptoe St.  Admittedly, it's less scenic during the 3-4 months of each year that the canal is empty.  BNSF 3186 is a GP-50.
October 2014

The reason I made my original statement was to jokingly imply that between Richard and myself, we have probably taken photos of that particular train from every imaginable angle, in all sorts of weather, and probably have photos of every locomotive that has ever been used to power that train.  And we have probably posted all of those photos somewhere on the internet as we have shot them.

What makes the Byron Turn so interesting to us?  Proximity, for starters.  I live in Richland, only a couple blocks from the PoB line.  Richard lives elsewhere in the Tri-Cities, but commutes out to the Hanford site daily along a route parallel to much of the PoB line.  Most weekdays, we both are at our respective work locations during the day.  But, we both work on 9-hour-per-day schedules that permit us to take every other Friday off.  So, Fridays are my big day for chasing trains (and lots of other domestic tasks), and I believe the same goes for Richard.  In addition, if I have doctor’s appointments, I will sometimes schedule them in the mid-morning, so I can hopefully see a train moving on my way to or from the appointment.

Totally by accident, I managed a nice pan shot of this former ATSF GP-39-2 heading toward North Richland.  I must have moved the camera while shooting, leaving the backgound and foreground "speed blurred" while maintaining focus on the forward facing end of the engine (acutally the rear end).  October 2011

Variety is another interesting aspect of the Byron.  You never know for sure what locomotive (or locomotives) will show up at the head end.  Most often, it’s a single 4-axle EMD GP-series model, but 6-axle SD-40-2s have been known to appear.  Also, with two possible BNSF paint schemes on the “geeps”, with the round or the “swoosh” logos, plus a few still wearing ratty former BN Cascade Green schemes, you never know what you’re going to get.  I’ve even seen blue and yellow Santa Fe locos on the Byron.  Depending on how the engines are used between assignments to the Byron, and whether they need to use the wye track at N. Richland, it’s anybody’s guess whether they’ll be running long hood or short hood forward on either leg of the run.

It's not that we have a problem with the daily TCRY trains.  Their red, white and blue paint scheme looks pretty snappy and there’s an ongoing hope that they’ll rebuild and roll out their former SP “Tunnel Motor”.  Also, although BNSF may have an inside track (pun intended) with certain customers, the overall traffic balance between BNSF and TRCY appears to favor the little guy, for now.  TCRY trains seem to be considerably longer than BNSF’s Byron Local trains.  Even when you factor in BNSF unit trains once or twice a month, I would still wager TCRY hands more total carloads off to UP in Kennewick than BNSF gathers from North Richland.

Ignoring the railfan safely standing on the opposite side of the street, two BNSF crewmen handle a switching move near the Kennewick depot.  BNSF 2185 is a former Penn Central GP-38, while the GP-39-2 2772 is an ex-Santa Fe unit.  March 2010

So how does the Byron crew feel about their two “groupies”?  Richard seems more comfortable conversing with them when the opportunity arises, and he has had fairly positive contacts with them.  My policy is generally to stay out of their way and let them do their job.  I have one BNSF-employed friend who sometimes has worked the Byron, and he doesn’t seem to mind a couple responsible railfans.  Either way, I know the occasional waves I get from the passing BNSF crews appear more friendly than those from the TCRY guys, but that’s an entirely subjective assessment.

There’s an unwritten rule among railroad historians that the smaller and more obscure a certain historic railroad actually was, the larger and more enthusiastic will be its fan base.  The Rio Grande Southern and New York, Ontario & Western are two examples of long-disappeared railroads that still have large followings today, far out of proportion to their actual importance.

Does this same line of thinking apply to modern railroads?  I think the Byron Turn and its two dedicated “foamers” prove the point – the amount of attention paid to, and the total number of photographs taken of, BNSF’s daily train to N. Richland far surpasses its significance in the grand scheme of American railroading.

So, here are more images of the Byron Turn in action:

Once named "Pacific Pride", GP-38 2075 has been demoted to service on the Byron Turn.  One of the first diesels delivered to the then-new Burlington Norther Railroad in 1970 (it had been ordered by predecessor Spokane, Portland & Seattle RR just prior to the merger), 2075 was later re-decorated in a special scheme that carried the emblems of all BN ancestor roads.  BNSF is satisfied with placing those emblems on grain hoppers these days to "honor" its heritage, leaving 2075 to keep gathering dirt and grime, while the weather does its best to obliterate the logos of long-gone railroads.  December 2010

The Port of Benton-owned rail line crosses the mouth of the Yakima River on its route leaving Richland Jct.  The wetlands alongside the river and the rails are part of the Chamna Wildlife Refuge, and even in easy to access locations, they provide lots of interesting photo angles for passing trains, this one behind GP-38-2 2094.  March 2013

GP-39E 2628 pulls its train eastbound across the large steel bridge that crosses Interstate 182 on the south end of Richland.  March 2015

GP-39E 2910 rolls through Richland Junction on its eastbound run.  This is the point where the original US Government Railroad diverged from the Union Pacific Yakima branch.  For some time this was the interchange point between the TCRY and Union Pacific, but arrangements have since been made allowing TCRY trains to run farther east for interchange at Kennewick.  Now, the tracks in the foreground have been removed (the Yakima Branch beyond this point has been gone since the early '90s).  With rights all the way through to N. Richland, however, BNSF trains don't give that situation much thought.
February 2011

Perhaps not the most compelling image I've ever taken, but notice the World War II-era fighter plane taxiing for takeoff at Richalnd's airport as GP-39-3 2866 passes.  September 2015

Here's that large bridge across the Interstate again, seen from a parking area for the Chamna Wildlife Refuge.  2866 again has charge of the train, with a long string of refer cars on the drawbar.  There is a significant grade in both directions to reach the elevation of this bridge, and heavy trains struggling over this hump can often be heard from quite a distance.  December 2015

A Yellowstone Ave. resident holds his son up to wave at the train crew as SD-40-2 1836 hauls its train past.  April 2014